Hooked On Phonics Worked For Me!

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I can read! Well, a few words, anyway. It was a very exciting day for me (Sunday), when I realized I could read the words Sri Racha, Chonburi, elephant, and some others. Now I need to work on my vocabulary because it isn’t that helpful to be able to sound out all these words if I don’t know what they mean!

I have been working on learning the Thai alphabet, a little bit each day for a few weeks now, well really since I arrived in Thailand, but more studiously since I got to Chonburi. I have the consonants pretty much memorized (names and sounds), and most of the vowels, and Spice and Porsche tested me today using my tiny flashcards. The next step, though, is production, which I need to work on. The letters are so pretty, with little loops and curves, but a lot of them look similar, so I need to work on making sure that the curlicues are going in the right direction when I write them or it could change the meaning of the word entirely, or turn it into nonsense.

It is really an interesting process, because I can get inside the learning process from a kindergarten perspective. I am making myself do a lot of the things that I had my kinders do last year in the classroom. I got a little kid workbook to practice tracing the letters and then writing them on my own. I like to use different media, too, to keep it interesting. Just like little kids, I like to write on the whiteboard and in the sand with a stick when I’m at the beach. I got a small magna-doodle, but that is not as satisfying because it is really blurry.

As I learned the letters, I would try to pick them out in signs and newspapers, etc. I also made my alphabetical list of the alphabet in my notebook, but then I did a separate section where I grouped letters that look alike. The final section has letters that make the same sound. Thai is a phonetic language, but there are 10 sounds that have multiple letters that represent them, including /t/, which has different 6 letters for it! So reading will not be too hard anymore, but writing will still pose a challenge since I won’t know which of the letters for each sound to use. But I think that there are some that are used more often than others, and with practice, I think I will get those. I love the way the writing looks, but I still feel awkward making many of the letters. I feel myself improving with practice, though.

The next part of my notebook is divided into vocabulary sections: greetings, numbers, colors, school language, etc. I write the word in English, then the transliteration, and then the Thai word, so that will help me practice my writing and reading. Maybe soon I will be able to read a book for children . . .

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Comments

[Courtney]

Inspiration
Watching you be able to read words and letters this past weekend has inspired me to delve a bit deeper into this mysterious Thai language. I think I have become too complacent in my pidgin Thai and would like to know more. So thanks for that!

[lkrhoads]

glad i can be an inspiration
haha- well the old sounding out the words is only getting me so far. i just came back from the bus station, trying to see about buses to Krabi, and the only damn city i could figure out was Trat! oh well. I think in the end I deciphered through pidgin English paired with pidgin Thai that all of the other places on the board were small in-between towns, so then I felt a LITTLE better. But just a little, because I still don't know how one gets to Krabi without having to go up to Bangkok. But jai yen yen na- tomorrow is a new day . . .

[David Walters]

Phonetical Thai
I also used Phonics to learn Thai and now we have adapted the English style of learning Phonics to use at my school (www.beyc.co.th). We had to battle a little bit to get some parents to accept our way of teaching but the children thrive learning it our way. Just like in phonics we would teach s a t p i n we started with the most common Thai consonants and vowels and the children learnt to blend from the start. This can't be done learning the Thai way. All our kindergarten kids are well above the level for their age group. One of the kids sat in the office the other day reading the Office Mate magazine while he waited for his Mum to pick him up after school. Very impressive. If only the Thai Education System would catch up a little.

[lkrhoads]

That's very interesting! Glad it's working for the children!!!