Thai Books

Background

Step-By-Step Thai is a 6-book series of Thai language reading, writing, and pronunciation books that I have been working on over the last several years. This project has been, without a doubt, the most challenging project I have worked on in my career in education.

Why?

Because I dove into designing and developing a language learning program for a language that I knew nothing about! I couldn't speak one word of Thai. I couldn't read one word of Thai--couldn't even pronounce one letter of the alphabet! All of that, though, didn't make me shy away from the project. In fact, it's what drove me to the project.

Why?

Because I am firm believer in the process of education, and I believed then, and I believe now that I can use my understanding of how humans learn to create programs for any subject matter -- especially language learning.

The Content

As I couldn't read or write Thai, I had to find learning content that was already available. After some searching, I found a series of children's reading books called "Mani and friends." This series of books was perfect, as it was written for Thai primary school children by the Ministry of Education in the 1970's and was in the public domain.

The Learning Process

The Thai alphabet has 72 letters. That's a lot! For comparison, the English alphabet only has 26 letters! Many Thai language schools and private teachers, though, simply give their students the list of the 72 characters with sound files and tell their students to "memorize the alphabet." This is highly ineffective and very frustrating for students. There is a better way!

There are two primary tenants of language learning.

Learn in small chunks--bite off more than you can chew, and you are destined to fail.
Learn in context--learning letters and words with out a communication context is like learning the names of a bunch of spices without ever learning a recipe--it does you no good at all.

The Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, learners will be able to

listen to and match appropriate sounds to the letters ม น ก ด ต อ -า ี
correctly pronounce the letters ม น ก ด ต อ -า ี
write the letters ม น ก ด ต อ -า ี
listen to and match the sounds to the words มานี, มี, อา, กา, ตา
write the words มานี, มี, อา, กา, ตา
read and comprehend at short text about facial features.

The Learning Process in Context

The context of this course is the Manee and Friends story created by the Ministry of Education. You can see the context for the first lesson in Step by Step Thai by looking at page 1 of the Manee and Friends book (below).

The first thing I did was look at the letters on the page and identify how many unique characters there were (there were 8 unique letters, which is perfect for one lesson).
Then I took those letters and entered them into a computer program called BYKI. Using the software and sound files that I paid a voiceover company to make, students play fun games to learn the names and sounds of the letters.
After students learn the pronunciation of the 8 letters, they learn to write them. they do this using the audio files in the software and the printed textbook. They hear the sound of the letter and then write the letter, which reinforces both their recognition of the sound and the shape of the letter. At the end of this section or the program, students have the ability to recognize the sound of the letters, produce the sound of the letters, and write the characters.
Having acquired the ability to do this, students move on to combine the letters they learned to make words. They do this, again, by using the BYKI software to learn and play games using both written and audio files. At the end of this section of the program, students now have the ability to recognize the sound of the words, produce the sound of the words, and write the word after hearing them spoken.
Finally, after having learned the letters and the words, students read the original script and answer comprehension questions.
This process is completed, with some changes, chapter after chapter for 6 full workbooks, at which point students have a good ability to read and write basic Thai.