Wednesday, February 03, 2010

visit the AUA Thai blog

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.

Another former student of AUA Thai is currently the director of the program. His name is David Long. Those of you who have been reading my blog for the past 16 months would have already read my posts on ALG World, and the ALG method, so you might be able to remember that David Long is one of the earliest students to have thoroughly succeeded via Automatic Language Growth (ALG). I recently discovered that David Long started The AUA Thai Blog in November. This is where I discovered the link of the former student who had written a blog about his experience as he went through the AUA program. Much thanks goes to Dan for leaving the link!

The AUA Thai Blog is very interesting. David Long has written articles about the philosophy behind the ALG method, and he can write from experience too! I like his article on rubber trees and language students. I'll bet you didn't know there was a similarity! He also has an article about the year he spent as a student of AUA Thai.

There are differences in how ALG is supposed to be done at AUA Thai and how I am doing with my TV method. Of course, I don't have the lower levels to go through with the TV method. I'm basically exposed to the full amount of language that people watch in TV dramas every day in China. Another difference is that I might be paying a little too much attention to the words. However, in my experience, when I am hearing the words being spoken, that is when I am not thinking in English. Any thinking about anything will block my ability to hear what is being spoken. I will write more about it if I can get to the point where I can stop thinking and just listen.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for linking! I can't wait to read David Long's blog.

    Another difference between ALG/children's learning and the TV Method is that the TV Method has no interaction. TVM is observation-only, on the outside looking in. Like a fly on the wall. Children have parents to show them things and talk to them directly, which I think ALG tries to emulate. These interactive experiences between parent/child are better at producing the "cascades" that Dr. Brown talks about in his book.

    This is what I notice when I try the TV Method and compare my learning experience to that of my son (2-years old).

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  2. Thank you so much. These blogs are food for my soul.
    "Rubber trees and language students" rocks, I wholly concur.

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  3. Thomas, as far as I understood the student from AUA-Thai combined from the beginning the AUA courses with the TV-method (even if he doesn't name it so) at home.

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