This is a view of the building from the street. It looks a little drab, but the school will be moved to a much nicer facility in the next couple of years...
They call their method the Automatic Language Growth Program (ALG) and it’s definitely not the type of class for somebody looking for a crash course on basics to get around. With that said, here is short blip about their model…
The AUA Thai classes are separated into 10 levels and each level includes about 200 hours of instruction. For the first few levels, not sure about the more advanced levels, there is no homework, tests, quizzes, etc. All you do is go to class and listen. They don’t even want you to speak Thai in class, even if you know the words. You don’t learn the alphabet, so no reading or writing – although they do write Thai words on the board. For the first level, AT 1, you pretty much go into class, which begins every hour on the hour, and just listen and watch. Yes, that’s right, they conduct class in about 99% Thai and 1% other (English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc). Usually, they have some sort of pre-planned lesson about some aspect of Thai life, history, culture, etc. Which I think is great because it gives me a chance to get the inside scoop on stuff I would never have known, some of which even people who’ve lived in Thailand for a while still don’t know! Fun topics I’ve seen are Thai marriages, the uses of bamboo in Thailand, the way they make fun of Thais from the Isan (NE) region of Thailand, and Thai business conglomerates and their retail and hospitality empires.
Speaking of business conglomerates, the reason the school is moving, which coincidentally, will be to Central World Plaza (aka, host of Bangkok ELLE Fashion Week; the Central Department Stores group owns CWP and is one of the largest in Thailand), is that the owners of the land that AUA currently sits on want to redevelop it into commercial/hospitality property. Who are the owners? Well, you can see from the words at the building entrance that the AUA sits on royal land!
Sounds a little wonky, huh? I mean, how do I understand what’s going on if they conduct the class in Thai only? Well, they draw lots of pictures, use a lot of visual aids, and act a lot! It’s sort of like charades sometimes, I find it quite amusing! The theory behind their method is that you can take the traditional approach that many of us are familiar with in terms of learning a language – start by learning the alphabet and then learn words and phrases. Practice writing the scripts if it is anything other than the Roman script and also have tests that show you that your vocabulary is growing. After a while, you start having writing assignments that show you have a stronger grasp and command of your newly acquired language. In the end though, you pretty much have a whole bunch of words in your head that you will always pronounce with some sort of accent that will identify you as an American.
The alternative is to approach learning a language like a child would…where you’re sort of immersed in an environment where you’re not really sure what’s going on and you don’t know how to express yourself and all you feel like doing is crying so that somebody will pay attention to you because you can’t seem to make the same foreign sounds that the adults are making to communicate with one another. Wow, talk about a long and convoluted sentence! Sometimes, you can tell that English isn’t my first language, huh? Anyway, so the point is that hopefully, you can learn to put your mind into a mode where it is very much a sponge that soaks up ideas and modes of communication because it is the “natural” way to learn a language. At first, you will feel a little confused and unable to express your thoughts and feelings…and much like a child, you are unable to make the sounds the same way that those who have been speaking the language for all their lives can. You can’t seem to string together a basic sentence even though you know the words and simple phrases, let alone communicate sophisticated ideas. It has certainly tried my patience and for the first 10 hours or so, I kept wondering to myself what I had gotten myself into. However, I’ve been close to 60 hours now after three weeks and am excited to report that I can understand a lot of what’s going on in class! We’re not supposed to focus on words, consult dictionaries on the side, or speak Thai in or out of class – I’ve been very good at all of these. I mean, if I’m going to do it their way, I might as well go all the way, right? They don’t want us speaking in class because, if you didn’t already know, Thai is a tonal language. Thus, if you pronounce a word…say, “mai” in the wrong tone, it could mean anything from new to wood, silk, or a negative answer to a question. They don’t want the other students latching on and also getting stuck on the wrong tones. Therefore, all of the teachers are native Thai speakers.
I do have to admit that I have one secret weapon that many of the students in my class lack. That is the fact that I speak Cambodian. Although Thai and Cambodian are part of different language families (Sino-Tibetan and Mon-Khmer, respectively), they share almost identical grammatical patterns and even some very similar words. It’s hard for me to give you an example that’s not verbal…but here goes. The word for “handwatch” is nah-lee-kah in Thai and nia-le-kah in Cambodian. The word for “doll” is doo-kah-dah in Thai and doe-kah-dah in Cambodian. Also, a lot of the words that express more complex ideas and concepts are quite similar because many of them have Pali and Sanskrit roots (from India). Anyway, I’m probably boring the majority of you to death =)…maybe I should tell you instead that much like the “Bolex” clock we have in the room, they call me an American “copy” because I’m Asian and not Caucasian.
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