Tuesday March 28: Updating Rapid Read Thai… there may be disruptions.

You can learn to Read Thai in a week!

“Well, whoopee! But why would I even want to?”

The Rapid Method is primarily a clear, well-defined and simple path to learning Thai. Period.

But why start with reading, if your goals are speaking and understanding?

For starters, it’s quicker, easier and more efficient to learn to speak, once you can read.

Just as important, by knowing how to read you will know exactly how to pronounce each word accurately and with the correct tone.

The various phonetic transliteration schemes – that try to represent Thai with an English approximation – are inconsistent and mostly just plain wrong.

This means that you will learn to pronounce Thai in a mangled way. Therefore Thais will struggle to understand what you are trying to say.

Worse still, these bad speaking habits become so ingrained that they are difficult to eradicate later on.

Another curious effect of learning to pronounce accurately is that you are able to hear more clearly what people are saying. There seems to be a strong correlation between seeing a word, the muscular action of speaking the word, and being able to hear it.

So being able to read Thai leads to good diction and listening skills.

Another advantage to being able to read is that you can pick up Thai vocabulary directly from your environment. Think of Thailand, as a Living Dictionary.

Learning to read Thai the old-fashioned way takes about half a year.

Learning to read Thai using the Rapid Method takes about 16 hours.

It’s great fun, and satisfying, to learn Thai words by reading them directly from signs and menus.

Find out more about reading and speaking Thai here.

New version (v4) coming soon!

The course has been completely revamped and is now phone & tablet friendly. The tones are introduced immediately and you will be drilled in the tones continuously so that they become trivial and intuitive in no time.

And the spaced-repetition flashcards with mnemonics and hints will be integrated into all the courses dynamically. So no need to faff about with Anki anymore. As you learn to read a new word, it is seamlessly added to your deck of cards so that can review it and remember its meaning at leisure, whenever you have an idle moment.

Note: because version 4 follows a markedly improved and effective approach, all previous versions will be discontinued. If you already have the “video workshop” course then you will be upgraded (to the browser version) automatically. (When the phone app version is ready, there will be a nominal upgrade fee, depending on how recently your purchased the course. Free upgrade if you purchase now.)

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* By “fluency”, I mean being able to speak effortlessly without having to think about it. You can “fluent” at various levels. The Rapid Method focuses on conversational fluency in a social context with your friends and family.

Rapid Read Thai online workshop

Can’t make it to the bootcamp?

15 half-days during the week over three weeks: September 19 to October 7 (Mon-Fri).