Live, interactive one-on-one training is offered by professional native teachers, focused on exactly what you need to learn! You will learn everything you need to know about the Thai language as well as practice all four of the essential skills to be a fluent speaker of Thai.
Each student’s classes are customized to enable you to achieve the specific goals you’re striving to attain. Beginner’s classes are designed around learning materials prepared by professional educators to give you a solid foundation in the language, while Intermediate and Advanced level classes focus on taking you to higher levels of competency by developing your communication skills in real-life practical exercises. You can be assured that we’ll give you all the tools and help you need to speak Thai as naturally and fluently as your potential permits.
Classes are available both in person (in Bangkok, Thailand) and online via Skype (anywhere in the world). We offer high flexibility in scheduling, to make sure that you get the most benefit from your classes by studying at the time most convenient for you. To insure we can accommodate our students’ tight schedules, we offer lessons any time from 7AM to midnight (our local time).
Our private, individualized lessons are tailored to your needs, without the constraints of the ready-made, prepackaged lesson plans some other tutors use. Your class will be unique, unlike any other student’s. You will design your own lessons, choose your own learning materials and set your own pace of study in consultation with us. We make everything as flexible as possible, while guiding you every step of the way, so that your lessons successfully help you reach the goals you’ve set for yourself.
So you want to be able to understand Thai people and communicate with them, but you don’t know a single word of Thai. Well, that’s not a problem. We will teach you everything you need to know from scratch! You’ll learn Thai pronunciation and everyday vocabulary, as well as all the basic expressions you need to get by day-to-day in Thailand. We’ll also teach you the basic conversation patterns you need to communicate in your daily interactions. And don’t worry, it will be fun.
Our highly interactive teaching style will keep you interested and looking forward to your next class. That’s one of the advantages of one-on-one lessons. We won’t have anyone else to pay attention to but you and you alone. We’ll be listening to every single syllable you pronounce and making sure you learn everything correctly. If our many years of experience learning several different languages have taught us anything, it’s that language learning is all about practice. You can study 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, but if you never practice, you won’t be able to speak Thai or any other language.
That’s the fundamental reality of language learning, and it is never going to change. Because we recognize this, in our classes we will always make sure you get to practice your language skills and use the language a lot by asking you questions and having you respond in Thai using new word patterns right after you have learned them, as well as giving little quizzes on things you’ve already learned, to help consolidate your knowledge. When you hear new words spoken, are stimulated to produce sentences with them, and get instant feedback to keep you on the right track, you build long term memories that take your Thai proficiency to higher levels and help keep it there.
You have the option to study conversation only, or conversation with the Thai writing system. If you elect to learn how to write, we’ll make sure you get plenty of practice, just as we do with conversation. We want to insure that if you show your Thai handwriting to Thai people they’ll be able to read it, so we’ll be strict about making sure you learn to form all the characters correctly and with the correct proportions. And by “strict,” we mean that we’re going to take teaching you seriously, because your success is our success.
You might wonder if we teach writing first and conversation later or vice versa. Again, it depends on what you prefer. If you have plenty of time and you want to take it slowly, learning to write first could be an option. The drawback to that is it’s going to take a long time before you can express yourself in Thai. Most of the time, students contact us before an upcoming vacation in Thailand, or when they find they need to use Thai in the near future for various purposes. Learning to write alone isn’t very useful in those situations, so we usually recommend you learn conversation and writing simultaneously, using transliterated materials. Once you acquire a knowledge of the Thai alphabet, we can slowly transition you from transliterated Thai to Thai script. How long that process takes is up to you, but the more frequently you can attend classes, and the more commitment you bring to your studies, the faster it will likely proceed.
The instructional materials used in your classes will depend on your study goals. For conversation we typically use our self-produced and completely unique teaching series, the “PickupThai Podcast.” We developed these based on our first-hand experience with Thai learners and professional teachers to focus on teaching you to speak Thai naturally, the way real Thais speak in real life. The series was purposely authored to include lots of humour and exciting real life stories to keep you interested and entertained. It’s unlike any other language-learning materials you’ve ever encountered, and we think you’ll have fun and get a few chuckles while using it. If you’re looking for a fun and creative language learning experience, you should give the “PickupThai Podcast” a try. The lessons are designed to make self-study enjoyable, so you will look forward to reviewing the audio files by yourself after class. We’ve gotten plenty of positive feedback from past students on the our materials and we’re really excited to be able to teach students to speak Thai the way real Thais speak. Check out our samples lessons and you’ll see what we mean.
Of course, you’re always welcome to choose any instructional materials you’d prefer, and if you want normal textbooks, there are plenty of options. We think “Thai for Beginners” is an adequate alternative that introduces all of the typical everyday vocabulary, and some simple dialogues. Another is “Progressive Thai,” a very well-written book with more detail and useful sentence patterns and expressions. It’s suitable for beginners to intermediate learners. If you already know the Thai characters and want to practice your reading skills more by studying how to speak with materials written in Thai script, we suggest the book “Everyday Thai for Beginners.” If you’re still learning the Thai writing system, we generally use Benjawan Poomsan Becker’s “Thai for Beginners,” but if you have another textbook in mind, let us know. We’ll take a look and let you know if we think it’s the right one for you. Free materials on the internet are another possibility. Whatever works best for you works best for us, so feel free to give us suggestions for instructional materials!
It’s a great idea to learn some “survival Thai” if you’re going to be in Thailand for a brief period of time as a tourist or a short-term visitor. Knowing some Thai will make your time here much easier, since obviously not everyone in Thailand speaks English. Knowing the basics can save you time, money, and maybe even some headaches of course, but besides that you’ll likely find Thai people get excited and impressed when you speak to them in Thai! Thais are noted for their hospitality to foreigners, but they do seem to really appreciate it when foreigners make the effort to try to communicate with them in their native tongue. So being able to speak a a little Thai will likely enrich the quality of your travel experience while in Thailand, and might even help you connect more with the locals, and make your stay more enjoyable than it would otherwise be.
We can teach you tourist Thai with or without a textbook, or any of the typical pocket-sized books on Thai designed to be carried by travellers can be used as the basis for instruction. We’ll teach you all the essential phrases and expressions you need, as well as the correct pronunciation critical to being understood. Or you might want to collect all the phrases that you want to know in English and have us teach you how to say those things in Thai, together with all the other essential stuff you might not have thought about. Everything depends on how much time you have for classes. If you have months to prepare, then we can use textbooks or our self-developed teaching materials “PickupThai Podcast,” a collection of fun stories based on everyday life situations that you will find yourself in during your trip, including eating in restaurants, buying street food, getting taxis or asking someone to take photos for you. These are just a few examples, to learn more about our fun and unique materials, click here.
Already completed the hardest part of learning the Thai language – beginner level? Great! You’re ready to use the tools you’ve acquired to improve your Thai and have fun mastering it! This is a great resource that gives you the advantage of being able to learn real Thai from real usage; things like entertainment media, blog entries, short stories, novels, movie scripts, song lyrics and so on. There are many real-life materials that can be used as learning materials, and your Thai lessons will be much more fun than before!
If you’re way past beginner stage, and actually know Thai quite well, but still don’t consider yourself to be an advanced learner, taking the big jump from using textbooks made for foreigners to real-life materials produced by and for native speakers could be a bit challenging. In that case, we recommend that you use our fun and interactive teaching materials “PickupThai Podcast – The Spicy Red Series,” which is designed to be a bridge connecting intermediate to advanced learners to the real world of Thai usage. Only natural-sounding real-life spoken Thai is used in the lessons, unlike in any other textbooks. Our Spicy Red lessons are the closest thing to real-life materials that you will ever find. You’ll come across phrases and expressions that you’re probably not familiar with or have never heard of, but which are commonly used by native speakers. With these real colloquial expressions, you’ll find yourself talking more and more naturally, like a Thai person. Every lesson offers educational information mixed with entertaining humorous phrases so our classes will be uniquely fun, unlike any Thai classes you’ve ever taken.
Learning a language is much more than just reading a textbook. The most important thing is to practice and master the four basic language skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing, so that you become “a user” of the language instead of a learner. With us as your personal mentors, you can always be assured that you’re learning everything correctly and in the most efficient way. There are many ways you can use the podcasts in our private classes. You can read the story out loud to us to practice your pronunciation and reading skills while we correct your mistakes and guide you to pronounce each word correctly. We’ll have you translate the story or make a summary and have us ask you questions about the story to check your comprehension. We can also have you compose your own sentences using the same structures taught in the lesson to see if you can produce sentences that are both grammatically correct and sound natural. At the end of each lesson, we’ll quiz you on the new vocabulary and expressions from the lesson, and you can ask any questions you may have from the story. We’ll answer your questions, explain anything that might be confusing you, and help eliminate any doubts and or misunderstandings you may have. You’ll find acquiring new knowledge and practicing your language skills using the podcasts to be an effective and fun way to learn.
If you choose to go with real-life materials, there are many other approaches we can use to help you improve your skills. Below are some of the class formats (with varying levels of difficulty) that we can choose from to design your lessons. The first step in deciding on a format is to determine your goals and what area you want to focus on, e.g. listening, pronunciation etc. After that, we can design a class format for your lessons.
1. Reading & Pronunciation Practice – We find articles from the Internet or a book and you read them while we listen and correct your pronunciation. This practice will help you read more fluently and with an appropriate rhythm and, most importantly, with correct pronunciation.
2. Presentation & Pronunciation Practice – You give a talk on topics of interest to you and we’ll correct all the grammatical mistakes that you make and all the words that you mispronounce, as well as all the expressions and sentences that sound unnatural.
3. Translation & Comprehension Practice – Speaking in Thai, we’ll dictate sentences and have you translate them into English to see how much you can understand. This will help you learn how Thai sentences are structured and improve your listening skills at the same time.
4. Reading & Comprehension Practice – We’ll read blog entries, articles, short stories, song lyrics or anything else that you’re interested in together with you, and help you understand the content by explaining all the new vocabulary, idioms and expressions that you come across.
5. Listening & Writing Practice – We’ll speak sentences in Thai and you write out what your hear. With this technique, you will be able to improve both your listening skills and writing skills, as well as your spelling, at the same time.
6. Essay Writing Practice – You write an essay or a short paragraph, depending on your level, and we’ll correct the grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes and all the other things that sound unnatural. You’ll learn how to express your ideas better.
7. Conversation Practice – We’ll converse with you about any topic that interests you and correct your mistakes and mispronunciations. You’ll get to practice speaking and listening concurrently and, most importantly, you develop more confidence in carrying on a conversation in Thai.
8. Ask Us Everything that You Need to Know – You assemble all the questions that have come up during your study of Thai, especially during self-study, and we’ll clear up your doubts by answering all your questions with explanations.
These skill-based lessons will help you expand your Thai knowledge and become more competent at the skills you need to focus on improving. We can rotate through a combination of these formats with you, if you choose. Everything about our lessons is very flexible! We will always listen to you and tailor the lessons according to your needs and preferences so that you gain the most benefit from them.
All of the above are only examples of what we can do together in classes to help you reach your goals. We’re always open to new ideas you suggest that you think will work better for you! For consultation or if you have any concerns at all, do not hesitate to contact us by email at: private.lessons@pickup-thai.com