TV Method Thai

By on Mar 29, 2009 in TV Method

One of my favorite language blogs to read is Keith’s Voice on Extreme Language Learning.  Keith is analytical about his language learning methods and he writes very clearly.  Currently, he is trying to learn Chinese through what he calls the TV Method.  The TV Method is a system where you watch a lot of TV in your target language, and pick up the language in a similar way that a baby learns its first language.  There’s no reading, no writing, and no speaking (well, not initially).  Here is a very generalized and unscientific list of what most humans go through language-wise starting shortly after they are born:

  1. They are talked to by everyone around them (nurses, parents, family, neighbors, etc).  They listen but there is no comprehension, no understanding.  Lots and lots of listening and watching.
  2. Eventually, after they encounter the same words in the same contexts over and over again, they start to understand and connect the words to objects or ideas.  “Mama” refers to this person.  “Milk” is this tasty stuff that I like to drink.  “Bath” is this.  “Blanket” is this.  Over time, they are exposed to more and more ideas and words, and through repeated exposure, they start to understand more and more of what is said to them.
  3. They babble, experimenting with different sounds in their mouths.
  4. They start to say the words they know, mimicking the people around them.  (around 1 year old)
  5. They start to say simple sentences. (around 2 years old)
  6. They become pretty much fluent in their language.  They can express their feelings and understand most of what is told to them, at least for topics that are relevant to them at their age. (4-5 years)
  7. They learn how to read.  (school)
  8. They learn how to write. (school)
  9. They learn about grammar. (school)

So the basic order is:

  1. Listening
  2. Speaking
  3. Reading
  4. Writing

The TV method tries to copy this order, but instead of finding yourself some new (say) Chinese parents, you watch Chinese TV shows instead for Baby Step 1 (Listening).

Keith has been experimenting with this method and documenting it as he goes.  At the time of this writing he has logged 437 hours of Chinese TV.  Reading his posts about the TV Method made me want to try it out, so that’s what I’ve done, starting a couple days ago.

If you’ve ever read the “About page” here on babelhut, you may have encountered this line under my profile section:

Someday, if lifetime permits, he [that's me] would like to learn Thai …

So I thought I’d use the TV method to learn me some Thai. My knowledge of Thai language is very close to zero. Here’s what I know, pre-TV Method:

  1. I know how to say “hello”, “excuse me” and “thank you”.
  2. I know how to say the number “5″.
  3. I know how to say “I can’t speak Thai.”
  4. I know how to say “This is for you.” (Taught to me for fun by a Thai coworker when I worked at the cafeteria back in the dorms. I delivered dirty dishes to him and said this when handing them over.)
  5. I know a few other random words (waterfall, why, fish sauce, shrimp, stupid, very).

So I have about a 20-word head start over a Thai newborn (plus I can walk, eat solids and use a toilet).

The Thai drama I’ve started with is called “RAK NEE HUA JAI ROW JONG“. I have no idea what that means (please don’t tell me. For controlled-environment-experiment-purity reasons.) I’ve watched 5 episodes so far, and it was actually kinda funny because in episode 2 the girl lead found a waterfall and said “waterfall”, which out of the 20 Thai words I know is the one I least expected to encounter first (well, second. I heard “you” a lot before that scene). If you want to watch too, the whole season is up on Youtube here: RAK NEE HUA JAI ROW JONG

TV Method, Thai, Total Hours: 7.5

Related posts:

  1. TV Method Thai Progress Report 1 (12 hours)
  2. Foreign Language Polio: TV Method Thai Progress Report 2
  3. L2 Holy Grail Books
  4. How Many Days In Each Month: The Thai Way
  5. Remembering Kanji
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9 Comment(s)

  1. Wow Thomas, KEEP US UPDATED!

    I know a big portion of my Spanish skills is because of watching TV (I do it more than anything else) and listening Spanish music. But still, I read books, write e-mails and do SRS sentences in Spanish. I’d love to start with Mandarin one day and wanted to go about it with the AJATT method (the method I use for Spanish), but this might be nice for the first (lets say) 500-1000 hours of input: TV ONLY (oh, with some cool Mandarin hip-hop, of course).

    Ramses | Mar 29, 2009 | Reply

  2. There’s an insane amount of Thai TV on YouTube these days. I’ll be interested to learn where you are around hour 1000. Keep it up! :)

    rikker | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply

  3. @Ramses: I sure will. I’ll cross the 10 hour mark today, so I’ll make my first progress report after that. The drama I’m watching now has 1.5 hour episodes, and I’ve been watching an episode a day. One nice thing about YouTube is that the 10 minute limit for videos gives you a lot of good stopping points to take a break :)

    @rikker: I was really happy to find a lot of Thai dramas on YouTube. I had to do some digging to find the one without subtitles though. :) Hour 1000 seems so far away. Hope I get there soon!

    thomas | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply

  4. Hey Thomas! Thanks for the compliments.
    This is a really good post too!
    Looking forward to reading more.

    Keith | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply

  5. I think you are wasting your time. Babies don’t know any language to start with, so they have to use that method. But you know at least one, so you don’t have to hear a word a thousand times to learn it. You can just look up the dictionary. Writing comes last for kids because thay can’t properly handle a pencil, but you can. Writing the language greatly helps you to learn how to read it, especially if it has a writing system that is new to you.

    Noa | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply

  6. @Noa: You could be right. I’ve never used the TV Method before, so I have no idea if it will work well or not. The primary reason I’m doing it this way is to try it out and be a guinea pig for the method. It’s an experiment. The whole idea is not to use my native language as an anchor into the new language. Does looking things up in a dictionary (and thus thinking about Thai in English) slow me down in the long run? It might. Is it possible to learn Thai only using Thai? Sure. Thai people do it. Can I do it? I’m going to try!

    Watching Thai dramas without knowing Thai has been a lot of fun for me, so in that sense it’s not a waste of time. I look forward to watching Thai TV everyday. It’s intellectually stimulating for me to figure out the meaning of something from a big garbled mess of sounds that I’m not familiar with. I’m approaching Thai like it’s a big puzzle to solve, and using a dictionary is like peeking at the answer book.

    thomas | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply

  7. @Noa: That’s not true. Have you ever tried the immersion method? If not: please try it first before attacking it.

    Ramses | Mar 31, 2009 | Reply

  8. @thomas

    “Watching Thai dramas without knowing Thai has been a lot of fun for me, so in that sense it’s not a waste of time.”

    I didn’t mean that. I’m not against watching dramas. What I’m saying is you are slowing yourself by not using your own language. You can watch it with thai subtitles or find and read the script, and look up words you don’t know. So instead of hearing a word 10 times before you learn it, you can look it up the first time, and reinforce it when you hear it 9 more times.

    “Is it possible to learn Thai only using Thai? Sure. Thai people do it. Can I do it? I’m going to try!”

    Sure it is possible. Thai people learn it that way because they don’t know any other language they can use to learn it. But it takes a very long time for them to learn, even though they live in Thailand and hear it all the time.

    Noa | Apr 1, 2009 | Reply

  9. @Noa: The whole idea is to not use a second language (English) at all to help me learn Thai. That’s the method. By immersing myself in Thai audio (and video), I am completely relying on my ears and eyes to observe and figure everything out myself. It’s a neat idea, and there isn’t a lot of data on it, so I’m volunteering to be one of the lab rats.

    I’m not dogging using a dictionary. I use one everyday, for Japanese (and books and an SRS too!). But now I found an opportunity to start a new language with a (to me) new method. Clean slate, I’m going for it.

    thomas | Apr 1, 2009 | Reply

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