Baan Phassaa Thai

[BigBangkokTheory]

Last month I took the one-on-one short course at Baan Phassaa Thai (Thai Language House) on Sukhumvit Soi 6. It is located in a mid-rise building next to the Dynasty Inn Grande.

 

The short course is 15 hours and costs 5,850 Baht. The little textbook is an additional 100 Baht. The short course is phonetics (Romanized)...no Thai alphabet or writing. It was a good course, and like anything else, you get out what you put in.

 

The format is this: you sit across from the instructor and work on vocabulary, pronunciations and phrases. They converse with you in Thai as well. They will also teach you phrases in addition to the textbook, so you are also writing things down. Tones are crucial in Thai...arguably the hardest part. The key to using the phonetics effectively is to be able to read them. I need to go back and work on that because I was writing down my own junky phonetics during the course.

 

One thing I found strange is the short course did not cover telling time or asking for directions. You would need to purchase an extra lesson for this, or tell them you specifically want to cover it (in the short course). They have extra text sheets that cover those areas.

 

The course is valid for one year if you want to spread it out over multiple holidays. The usual format is one hour every other day, but I crammed the 15 hours into two hours per day, every day! A little too mutt...I ran out of steam about halfway through the course.

 

Their website

http://www.thailanguagehouse.com/

 

Cheers

BBT

[leadpencil]

Last month I took the one-on-one short course at Baan Phassaa Thai (Thai Language House) on Sukhumvit Soi 6. It is located in a mid-rise building next to the Dynasty Inn Grande.

 

The short course is 15 hours and costs 5,850 Baht. The little textbook is an additional 100 Baht. The short course is phonetics (Romanized)...no Thai alphabet or writing. It was a good course, and like anything else, you get out what you put in.

 

The format is this: you sit across from the instructor and work on vocabulary, pronunciations and phrases. They converse with you in Thai as well. They will also teach you phrases in addition to the textbook, so you are also writing things down. Tones are crucial in Thai...arguably the hardest part. The key to using the phonetics effectively is to be able to read them. I need to go back and work on that because I was writing down my own junky phonetics during the course.

 

One thing I found strange is the short course did not cover telling time or asking for directions. You would need to purchase an extra lesson for this, or tell them you specifically want to cover it (in the short course). They have extra text sheets that cover those areas.

 

The course is valid for one year if you want to spread it out over multiple holidays. The usual format is one hour every other day, but I crammed the 15 hours into two hours per day, every day! A little too mutt...I ran out of steam about halfway through the course.

 

Their website

http://www.thailanguagehouse.com/

 

Cheers

BBT

 

Thanks for the information, I am going to email them as I am interested in doing the same course.

 

Just out of interest, did you know any Thai at all before you took the course? You said that they converse with you in Thai, is that on the material that you have just studied?

[Montien]

My be something worth considering. Thanks very much for the useful information.

[BigBangkokTheory]

Thanks for the information, I am going to email them as I am interested in doing the same course.

 

Just out of interest, did you know any Thai at all before you took the course? You said that they converse with you in Thai, is that on the material that you have just studied?

 

I knew some basic phrases through the Pimsleur CDs.

 

They start each lesson by conversing in Thai on the material from the prior lesson. After a while they will converse only in Thai, even the small talk before and after the lessons!

 

Try to get Sapan to teach you. She didn't teach me, but she is cuter than the older ladies who taught me! :P

 

Sapan is actually older than you might think...here is a pic. She has a very lively personality as well.

 

Edited June 6, 2010 by BigBangkokTheory

[Vint]

Seems very expensive to me.

 

Im just starting a course with UTL on Sukhumvit and im only paying 6000 for 60 hours worth of lessons.

[dv101]

I knew some basic phrases through the Pimsleur CDs.

 

They start each lesson by conversing in Thai on the material from the prior lesson. After a while they will converse only in Thai, even the small talk before and after the lessons!

 

Try to get Sapan to teach you. She didn't teach me, but she is cuter than the older ladies who taught me!

 

Sapan is actually older than you might think...here is a pic. She has a very lively personality as well.

 

IMG_8859.JPG

 

 

cuteness is not a reason to choose one teacher over  another.   teaching ability is

[kopite]

I used the following to learn the alphabet and vowels and within a few weeks was able to read some words and also improve my pronunciation. 

 

http://1steasythaialphabet.com/

 

Once you know the alphabet and vowels there are plenty of books to help you learn how to structure sentences and talk in different situation. This one is quite handy as it covers various every day scenarios such as ordering food, asking for directions, talking about family ect...

 

https://www.waterstones.com/product/easy-thai/jintana-rattanakhemakorn/9780804842563

 

Finally, and this is probably the most important tool I have, I use the Thai-English iOS app. This is based on the thai-language.com site. I can practice writing on my phone, hear how they words sound, forming sentences and the app itself has a vast library of example scenarios. It's all offline as well so no dependency on being connected to the web. If there are things I want to say and want to check if it makes sense I can use this to check as well.

 

Goes without saying that you will pick up Thai quicker if you know the alphabet.