ALG World has uploaded a 3-part video from an advanced class. In the title it says 'Famous People' so I guess that is what the class was on.
I believe the students need to complete 200 hours for each level, so that means the students in the class have put in about 800 or more hours of ALG World Thai and understand 60% or more. The students are also allowed to speak Thai and you can hear some of them answering the teacher. Also, I think in the advanced levels there is only one teacher instead of two, which is what I see in this one.
If you don't understand Thai, the third video is the most interesting one.
Here are the links if you need them:
ALG World's channel
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
learn homophones by ear
The picture above is one of the new DVD boxes that I bought to store my TV dramas in. The disc you see on the left side is on a hinged panel. It swings around and the first disc is on the other side. What's interesting is the way the discs overlap on the right side. This box is the same size as a regular DVD case but holds 4 discs. It's 19 cm tall and 1.5 cm thick.You can see a picture in my previous posts that shows the Heroic Legend packaging. It has 1 disc per box. So I have 12 DVD boxes for that series. An unfortunate waste of space.
As promised, (did I make a promise?) I finished the Last Agent series by the last day of the month. This is the 2nd time I have watched the 15 hour series, and I still don't know who the last agent is. I'm not sure which character the title refers to. Maybe "agent" has a different meaning than the one I'm thinking of.
There are so many words in English that have multiple meanings. You don't even realize it until you search in a dictionary to try to find the right word. On Sunday, at work I had to translate some English to Japanese. What a pain that was.
Chinese can be said to have a lot of homophones. English has a lot too, but we don't recognize it so easily because given a certain word we may think of one basic meaning. But for many words there are other uses that are actually different meanings. One of the things about being a native speaker is that when a word is encountered in context, the other meanings of the word never come to mind.
If I say I'm going to break a board, or I need to take a break because I'm bored, you would never stop to think about which meaning I intended for the words break and board/bored. And to us the word "break" might seem like the same word because in both instances something is being divided. But a coffee break is fundamentally different than a board break and a learner of English might see them as totally different. I can say I'm breaking a board, but I can't use the -ing for the other kind of break.
So I think that saying a language has a lot of homophones is not a good criterion for a language being difficult to learn. When you know the language well, the context is so specific that you never get the wrong idea, nor do you have to stop and think about the meaning because of all the homophones. Just try this one on for size: A competition to learn how to tie a tie in Thai ended in a tie.
With the TV method, I'm learning by listening. I don't know if this is the same as learning to play an instrument by ear or not. I haven't learned to play the piano, although I did take a piano class in college. But I was thinking the other day that if I was learning to play the piano, it would be a good idea to actually listen to the song that I was learning. If I knew the song well I would be able to recognize if I hit the wrong key in practice. If I didn't know the song well, I could be practicing an unnatural pace and I wouldn't even notice if I got some keys wrong.
When I was in band class around 5th grade, at first I was on drums. I was so bad at keeping the beat that I had to change instruments after a while. I changed to the slide trombone then. I found it difficult to learn to read the music sheet. So I was a pretty bad music student back then too. In fact, I remember a music class where we each had to sing something individually so the teacher could grade us once. I was so off tune that the music teacher didn't seem to believe it. In fact, she seemed disgusted by my awful performance. I'm still bad at singing.
Even though the TV method is a 'learn by ear' method, it won't be a problem learning different meanings for words that sound the same. The brain figures these things out. Just like when you were growing up, before you ever learned to read, you never had a problem with there, they're, and their.
Friday, March 27, 2009
watching TV really helps!
Whether used exclusively or as an addition, watching TV in your target language helps people to acquire fluency. One of the Japanese people I met when I briefly taught English conversation was not a student but rather a teacher just like us Americans, Australians, Brits, Canadians, and Kiwis. She had a perfect American accent and you would never suspect that she grew up in Japan. When I asked her about how she learned English, she told me about watching US TV shows repeatedly and even memorizing the lines in the shows.
I also have a coworker from Sri Lanka who speaks Japanese very fluently. He is much better at Japanese than I. His advice to me was to watch Japanese TV. He credits his fluency in Japanese to watching TV. Before he started watching lots of TV, he said used to have a hard time with Japanese.
There is also a comment on Steve's blog about watching TV that is not dubbed into your own language by Jamie.
I also have a coworker from Sri Lanka who speaks Japanese very fluently. He is much better at Japanese than I. His advice to me was to watch Japanese TV. He credits his fluency in Japanese to watching TV. Before he started watching lots of TV, he said used to have a hard time with Japanese.
There is also a comment on Steve's blog about watching TV that is not dubbed into your own language by Jamie.
I think one of the reasons that TV is such a great tool would be that you can get lots of input from TV. You don't need a native speaker or a teacher or a tutor. You can get as much input as you want from TV without relying on anyone else.Steve, your point about TV programme dubbing is an important one which is often understated. I live in Holland, where nearly everyone speaks English. Kids are already functional well before the age when they receive formal English at school (not until 11 by the way). The reason is exposure, and by having a wealth of English-speaking programmes, films, cartoons etc. on TV that they like watching. i.e. Meaningful input.
My Dutch neighbours speak excellent English, not through schooling or of necessity through work, friends etc., but by what they watch on TV: English programmes and films (often using Dutch or even English subtitles). They have made this point themselves.
The situation is not the same in other European countries, such as France and Italy, where programme dubbing is commonplace. And the average standard of English in these countries is much lower, despite the fact that English is taught in schools.
Heroic Legend
I finished my second viewing of Heroic Legend, a 23-hour, 35 episode Chinese TV drama. I watched it in Chinese with no subtitles, no translations, and no explanations. And I don't even speak Chinese. I am not a Chinese speaker. I do not have Chinese ancestry.
So why am I watching Chinese TV dramas? I am not studying Chinese. However, I am learning Chinese. This is my method to acquire Chinese. I call it the TV method. Following the principles of Automatic Language Growth (ALG), I am allowing the Chinese language to grow inside me.
On Wednesday, I received my shipment from Amazon China. I ordered 4 items for a total of 22 discs comprising 216 episodes in Chinese. I think it will take more than a month to watch all of it only one time each. I mentioned before about the type of box that my previous DVDs came in. One of the 4 new items used that exact box type for 5 discs. It had 2 stacks of 2 discs and 1 disc by itself, though the box has 4 areas. I guess if they wanted, they could easily stick 8 discs in that box. I mentioned before that this box type does not hold the discs securely. Well, in this item, all 5 discs are quite marred. I've checked the playability and there doesn't seem to be a problem so far. Out of the other 3 items, 2 of them don't even have boxes. The discs are in sleeves and put into a flat box sleeve. And the last one that does have a box is not a DVD box, so the discs also were in sleeves. So today I went out and bought a bunch of DVD cases for the discs.
I signed up for an account at Amazon China on March 12th and placed an order on March 14th. I payed for my order on March 17th, which I think was also the day the order was estimated to be ready. The next day, on March 18th, my order was shipped and it arrived a week later. Shipping costs seem to be calculated at 80% of the order price. I originally had ordered about twice as many items. Comparing the two orders, both were charged 80% for shipping. After the initial order placement I decided to remove the items which had the smallest discounts and keep the items which had the bigger discounts.
Now the next thing I need to decide is what to watch next. I want to watch something that I can finish up by the end of the month. Then on the 1st of next month I'll start on a new series. All of the new arrivals are quite long series. The shortest of those is 30 episodes, and if each episode is about 40 minutes which seems to be the norm, then it would take 20 hours to watch. Just so I can take it easy, I think I'm going to watch Last Agent again. It is only 15 hours long.
So why am I watching Chinese TV dramas? I am not studying Chinese. However, I am learning Chinese. This is my method to acquire Chinese. I call it the TV method. Following the principles of Automatic Language Growth (ALG), I am allowing the Chinese language to grow inside me.
On Wednesday, I received my shipment from Amazon China. I ordered 4 items for a total of 22 discs comprising 216 episodes in Chinese. I think it will take more than a month to watch all of it only one time each. I mentioned before about the type of box that my previous DVDs came in. One of the 4 new items used that exact box type for 5 discs. It had 2 stacks of 2 discs and 1 disc by itself, though the box has 4 areas. I guess if they wanted, they could easily stick 8 discs in that box. I mentioned before that this box type does not hold the discs securely. Well, in this item, all 5 discs are quite marred. I've checked the playability and there doesn't seem to be a problem so far. Out of the other 3 items, 2 of them don't even have boxes. The discs are in sleeves and put into a flat box sleeve. And the last one that does have a box is not a DVD box, so the discs also were in sleeves. So today I went out and bought a bunch of DVD cases for the discs.
I signed up for an account at Amazon China on March 12th and placed an order on March 14th. I payed for my order on March 17th, which I think was also the day the order was estimated to be ready. The next day, on March 18th, my order was shipped and it arrived a week later. Shipping costs seem to be calculated at 80% of the order price. I originally had ordered about twice as many items. Comparing the two orders, both were charged 80% for shipping. After the initial order placement I decided to remove the items which had the smallest discounts and keep the items which had the bigger discounts.
Now the next thing I need to decide is what to watch next. I want to watch something that I can finish up by the end of the month. Then on the 1st of next month I'll start on a new series. All of the new arrivals are quite long series. The shortest of those is 30 episodes, and if each episode is about 40 minutes which seems to be the norm, then it would take 20 hours to watch. Just so I can take it easy, I think I'm going to watch Last Agent again. It is only 15 hours long.
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