Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning

In Chris' blog, he noted that in order for Heisig to be successful in selling his books, he must market to the beginners in the language. As you can well imagine, if Heisig's advice was like mine, which is to learn reading and writing after you've become fluent in listening and speaking, he would lose 95% of his customers! Now, I'm not implying that this is the reason for Heisig's advice, but this is also the reality of language learning. Many people start, but few make it to fluency.

In my previous post, I introduced you to a former student of AUA Thai. Actually, I just quoted some text from the blog of someone who seemed pretty successful with the ALG method, as well as encouraged you to read it. It was good to get comments from those of you who did. Thanks.

While I have searched for blogs or experiences of students at AUA, I could not find any good ones through my own Google searches. But they do exist! And finally a good one has turned up. It was there all along but still it does not come up in my searches. Shame on Google! Searches always turn up with so many results that have very little to do with what you searched on. Google is not magic. Google doesn't have all the answers, and it certainly doesn't always give you the best results.

Thankfully we do have a nicely documented case of an AUA Thai student who progressed through 1500 hours in the ALG course. His name is Dan. Every month he wrote one post to document his progress and describe his level. If you are interested, you should read it. I'm going to quote some of the most interesting things he wrote. Outside of class he would speak Thai only when he knew how to speak without making up sentences. He started out attending about 5 hours a day (25 hours per week).

He attended from the end of August 2006 until March 2008.

-- Begin Quoted Text --

The global recovery has only just begun and China is already nearing the top of some categories. With a population 10 times bigger than Japan's, China must have not reached even a quarter of its potential.

China Dethrones Germany as Top Goods Exporter JANUARY 6, 2010

China took over the mantle of the world's top merchandise exporter from Germany in 2009, according to the latest figures, aided by a global economic crisis that has taken a greater toll on other trading powers. 

China in 2007 overtook Germany as the world's third-largest national economy, and is on track to soon surpass Japan to become the second-largest economy after the U.S.

And today from this article, Japan's exports grow for first time in 15 months, 27 January 2010

The Japanese finance ministry said China had now overtaken the US as Japan's largest overseas market.

China is also on the verge of overtaking Japan as the world's second largest economy.