Over the past few years I’ve heard several people mention that there are a lack of good free resources for teaching the Thai writing system. By a “good” resource, I mean one that’s designed for a beginner that teaches how to pronounce, recognize the letters they are hearing, read and write Thai text. I’ve always felt that learning the writing system, along with pronunciation, should be the first step in learning a language, and this is my version of a tool that allows that.
The course includes:
· 16 units which cover all major aspects of the Thai writing system and pronunciation, explained in a way that’s friendly to English speakers. This information has been checked by native speakers and advanced learners of Thai. I included everything I could think of, everything I could find in several other resources, and everything the checkers could add, so if I’m missing anything please let me know, but I think it’s safe to say that everything major is covered.
· Lots of audio. The basis of any good pronunciation course is listening and repeating. Every time something new is introduced to you, you will be asked to do this. All recordings were made by native speakers, not AI.
· Many images. They are used to show you how to draw each new item. Created from scratch by a native speaker.
· Memorization Exercises. These include directions on how to memorize, and you can hide or show things in order to better utilize your active recall. There aren’t very many resources that actually tell you how to memorize something, and I find this quite lacking because it’s such an important aspect of learning. Also, I stress active recall because I find methods that rely on repetition alone to be less effective. Repetition and active recall are both very important.
· General Exercises. These are primarily designed to test you on the information just covered, and secondarily to reinforce what you learned in previous units.
· Reading Exercises. Although the General Exercises cover everything, longer reading exercises are included for better retention. They have audio, and are in a reading tool that lets you check the definition or pronunciation on the fly. Anything that has been covered up to end of the associated unit is fair game, but we never slip in stuff that hasn’t been covered yet. The text and audio recordings were created by native speakers. To be clear, these are not meant to be readings for comprehension; that would require lots of vocabulary and grammar which I am not including in this course because it would make the learning curve too steep. Beginners are meant to merely use them to reinforce the writing system and pronunciation.
I hope you find this helpful. Enjoy!