This article was originally posted on WomenLearnThai.com.
Free Download: Thai Reader Project…
If your Thai learning adventure has come to a halt due to the lack of intermediate to advanced materials, the University of Wisconsin’s Thai Reader Project could be a fine fit:
The authors have attempted to create effective lessons in the reading of Thai that will help learners progress from the level of basic literacy to reading at the advanced level.
The lessons are based on authentic readings of the sort that learners of Thai will encounter in daily life in Thailand, ranging from basic informational texts to such as menus, timetables, newspaper advertisements and the like, to more complex texts such as news articles, editorials and short narratives.
As mentioned, this is a free resource, no purchase required. Just download the many PDF files here:
Lesson Volume I: Download page
Lesson Volume II: Download page
Note: I have added this resource to WLT’s growing Learn Thai for FREE section. There you will find other intermediate resources such as Hugh Leong’s Advanced Thai Reading and Vocabulary Building downloads.
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PS: My thanks goes to Bankei for this great find.
Thank you for your quick reply, Catherine. I’m gonna contact them 🙂
Cedric, I’m unaware of any answer sheets but it’s been years since I’ve visited the files. What you could do is contact the authors (perhaps they have something by now).
Hi, is there answer sheets for these files. I’m learning it by myself and some questions are really difficult T.T
Tien, following Andrew Biggs would be advisable. You can find where he is on this post: Andrew Biggs on Twitter and Facebook
Can you help me teching or advice about pratics between us thai and english language for thai people? mey be work.
you can visit by e-mail [email protected]
Thank you.
Tien
I am thai people and need to learn english.
Hi Richard. I was not aware that they updated the files. Have you contacted them?
Hi,
Are the old Thai readers pdf files available. The new ones are great but i was working my way through the old files.
Any ideas where i can veiw or download them?
Hope for a good answer…
thanks
Martyn, after the alphabet hurdle is overcome, I believe reading everything and often is the trick. These two course books can be read by the beginner, but they are talking advanced beginner – just like Everyday Thai for Beginners, you must already know how to read (Everyday Thai does have sound, so perhaps start with those materials?)
Catherine this is another diamond you have unearthed. I have bookmarked the resource rather than download and print, reading Rem’s view makes a lot of sense.
I need to learn to read Thai and hopefully after mastering the basics this will accelerate my learning even if I may need some back up papers (alphabet, vowels etc.) to refer to.
Hi Talen – I showed it to my Thai teacher today. We are working on something else right now, but we plan on getting to these materials eventually. She mentioned other workbooks for me to use that are in the same range.
Awesome find, Cat. One I am definitely going to put to good use!
Rem – You didn’t come across as overly critical to me, just concerned. Thai learning materials bring the same out in me too. I know what I need to learn, and it seems that I spend more time getting materials the way I need for them to work, then actually studying.
I too contacted Professor Bickner to congratulate him and his team. I also asked the Professor if he would please contribute to WLT’s Successful Thai Learners Interview series. I do hope that he can find the time.
So Professor Bickner, if you are reading this, we would love to read about your Thai learning experiences (the good and not so good), as well as any advice you have to share 🙂
I too am grateful for their work. I didn’t mean to appear overly critical. I just wanted to point out some of the apparent flaws of this otherwise great new ressource. I’ll try to contact them soon to thank them but also make some constructive suggestions.
Ah. Then I’ll be breaking out my handy SnowBall.
Everyone learns differently, and it took me awhile to understand how I learn languages: Read Thai script while listening to audio, repeat out loud, listen to the audio while writing it down. So Luca’s method fits me fine, and I’m looking forward to his advanced section.
But I am grateful that the University of Wisconsin worked to get these resources to the Thai learning community. For learning Thai, intermediate to advanced are just not well represented.
Unfortunately, since they insist their method is a break for the past methods attempting to teach all 4 skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing) together and that their sole purpose with this method is to teach students how to read, I doubt they will be adding sound files any time soon…
I too thought of the costs to print the materials in full colour. I checked, and the copy is not locked down. So yes, to save on printing costs, you can actually cut and paste the Thai script. A little bit of editing is needed though.
Fingers crossed that they will include sound files in the future. Or I will do what I always do: record my own.
Catherine,
Thanks for sharing the link. It looks great. That’s being said I am a bit disappointed in the end.
Lessons are clearly made for print not for online usage. They must have put great effort working on the design of their lessons but in my opinion it is to the detriment of the potential user. For most people with a so so printer, the printing costs with such a design will make this free ressources more expensive than a regular book such as the Becker’s books or other free ressources available for print such as the Gething’s Thai reader.
Add to that, that there is no sound files (unlike the Gething’s or with an additional cost the becker’s books), no indication on how to pronounce Thai words properly and no correction for the exercises and you obtain the following : a valuable work which required quite a lot of time and effort to put together but which I guess will remain largely underused.