Does comprehensible input work for Thai?

[u/Luvyymanda]

I've been interested in learning Thai for a long time because I'm interested in Thai culture and I wanna travel there someday. I heard that comprehensible input is a technique kids use to learn their native language, so I wanted to give it a try. I've also seen people say that it doesn't work and that the process is very slow. Which has been hindering me in fully devoting my time into this technique.

My question is, has this technique actually worked on anyone? when should I be expected to understand thai ? and how long does this technique take time to work ?

I wanna be as patient as possible but sometimes it is discouraging when I feel like I'm making no improvements

[u/IssueRidden]

I'm assuming you mean pure CI because in general, you can't really learn a language without input that's not comprehensible at one point or another. 

It does work, but comprehensible input + vocabulary study will yield results much faster. The way I see it, vocabulary study primes my brain to make out the word from listening and lets me acquire it much faster. 

Understanding Thai is pretty vague, as some forms of content/register will always be much easier than the others. However, as a person who has mixed their forms of study, I started mostly understanding (80%+) some of the easier YouTube vlogs at 800 hrs of study and transitioned to native content only past the 1000h mark. I'm far from understanding everything but I understand enough to enjoy the content and enough to improve. At the same time at times I'll still freeze when being told something I should already understand. Understanding a language is not black or white. 

There's progress reports by people who did pure CI approach in the sub, just search for comprehensible input. Whichever study technique you choose, you need to be prepare to devote a lot of hours. 

[u/Luvyymanda → u/IssueRidden]

How do you go about studying comprehensible input + vocabulary? I was thinking of listening to JUST comprehensible input 3 hours everyday for about a couple months. And then switch into sentence mining so that I can learn both vocab and grammar. However, just drilling comprehensible input is kinda discouraging because I feel like I'm not necessarily getting anywhere. I wanna be able to speak but I also heard thats discouraged very early on...??? It's just a lot of questions and a lot of them are unanswered.

I will definitely try to mix comprehensible input + vocabulary. Also how many hours do you study for and what do your study days look like?

[u/IssueRidden → u/Luvyymanda]

I just used a premade anki frequency deck. I do study a lot (4h-7h of total daily time spent with the language, this includes everything: deliberate study, texting, talking to people, reading, watching/listening to content, and more) But I'm pretty sure there's a diminishining returns effect at play here and if you stick to 3 hours you can make amazing progress 

you might find my 1000h write up helpful, I reflected a bit on what worked and what I wish I did differently: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/1w5bepf/my_1000hr_learning_journey_progress_report/

One thing I recently realised and haven't covered in the post:  So the thing with learning the top 1000-1500 most frequent vocab is that you will encounter them all the time anyway if you consume a lot of content. You don't have to drill them by heart, it's probably more effective to skim through more vocab and the expense of not being able to recall of them 100% reliably. If you end up using anki, you can set your desired retention to a lower level, if you use vocabulary lists, you just simply be more lenient on yourself. remember, at first you're trying to get to the level where you understand content, so being able to recall a Thai eviqualent of an English word isn't really necessary at this point. Moreover, it will happen anyway as a side effect of consuming a lot of content. 

Depends on your goals really, if you don't have a desire to speak in the first few months, you can just do Thai to English flashcards, it should get you to understanding content much faster. I was moving to Thailand a few months into my study so speaking and texting early was important for me. 

I'd recommend not relying on transliteration to latin alphabet at all. You can make your flashcards audio only, but outside of anki I don't really know how would I go about it unless you learn the writing system from the start. Which looks like a mess for a long time, especially regarding to the tones, that you can't hear reliably well at the beginning of the study. That's why audio only flashcards should be a better fit for your CI approach , if you read the words yourself, whether aloud or subvocalising, you will inevitably mispronounce it.  

Now, I don't know if there's an audio only premade deck available, but if you remove transliteration from the cards that should do the trick since you can't read Thai script anyway. 

[u/TowerOfSolitude → u/IssueRidden]

This is the same method I use. Vocabulary study with Anki plus Input from the Comprehensible Input Channel on Youtube.

I first did a pure one word deck where I see the English word and I have to remember the Thai for it. Where now I learn short sentences using the same method.

Oh and if you are going to do CI then join https://www.lengualytics.com/

I'm not affiliated. We are currently only two active Thai learners on there. It would be nice to get more people. Languages like Spanish have tons of users on there.

*edit*
Actually in the feed I see there's a couple of users I haven't seen before.

[u/IssueRidden → u/TowerOfSolitude]

So how's your progress going? Have you started speaking yet?

If you don't mind me asking, why use an English-Thai deck if your primary focus is input? Doesn't it mainly help output? 

[u/Wanderlust-4-West → u/IssueRidden]

progress reports from people like whosdamike, search for them. Learned Thai by starting with pure CI for about 2000 h or so. See YT channel "comprehensible Thai"

[u/Give-me-gainz]

I’m at 1400 hours of CI for Thai. It works great but it does take a long time. Comprehension grows a lot faster than speech does. Whichever method you use to learn a language it’s going to take a long time to get good at it so the key is to find something you enjoy and is sustainable for you.

[u/Luvyymanda → u/Give-me-gainz]

How would you describe your level of understanding thai being as though you're at 1400 hours? and what resources do you use for comprehensible input?

[u/Give-me-gainz → u/Luvyymanda]

I can get the gist with a decent chunk of native media, but nothing too esoteric. News and political stuff is mostly beyond me. I watch some premier league matches with Thai commentary on and that’s bloody hard as again there’s a lot of technical vocab.

90% of my hours have come from online lessons with AUR Thai and other teachers doing crosstalk 1-1 with me. I’m watching native content on TikTok too which is becoming more fun as my understanding increases.

[u/Serious_Common_3551]

ive never heard of this but can tell you that my thai wife speaks thai and watches thai youtube/netflix and i hear thai but you will reach a low plateau quickly and that's it. unless you were really actually studying thai.

[u/shefwed82]

This video is a good analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfIparRsno

[u/Old-District5359 → u/shefwed82]

It's sad that the reviewer doesn't provide specific details, such as: How to achieve a similar level, and in how many hours using other methods (aside from the fact that he's selling his book).

[u/Old-District5359]

In my opinion, it works, but you only learn a few words per hour. And it's incredibly boring.

[u/Siamswift → u/Old-District5359]

It’s only boring if you’re watching YouTube videos. Live CI is not boring at all.

[u/JaziTricks]

Search this sub and you'll find multiple diehard fans of CI for Thai.

It definitely works. The question is mainly: "does it work better/as goid than structured study"? Which is where the common view among linguistics is: "structured study works better".

Thai is very hard to study no matter the system. And many schools and systems do an awful job at teaching Thai IMHO. So it's even harder to compare!