20 Minutes a Day to Enjoy Better English

Following the example of HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhron, known as the princess who never stops learning, if we wish to improve our abilities with the English language, we too must never stop having fun learning.

For busy students, faculty, and staff, it is usually impossible to stop every other activity and focus full time on English language studies. Even those who spend weeks or months in specialized courses find that after they have returned to their normal routines, the awareness of English quickly fades. This even happens to ajarns who spend several years overseas earning a Ph.D. Part of this is because of the great difference between the Thai and English languages. Parts of our brains needed to speak English which Thai people normally do not use must be kept in shape, as with any other physical exercise. Also, very few Thai people have a relationship based on pleasure with the English language. For most Thai people, English is associated with boredom, pain, and embarrassment. This is because everyone in the Kingdom almost without exception was first taught English at age five by a very nice Thai lady who had no idea of how to pronounce the language, or how to use it. From everyone’s early childhood, English became a burden. It is needed to be able to pass meaningless aptitude tests, which do not measure any real level of understanding. Thai people frequently pass such exams as the TU-GETs, while being unable to speak, read, or write English in any useful way. So what can be done? If you have spare income and wish to enjoy a trip abroad to a language program in the UK or USA, go ahead. Or if you stay in Bangkok and invest in a costly series of lessons at the British Institute, probably the best alternative among many, the results will depend on your instructor, the other students in the class, and many other factors. The cheapest, quickest, and best solution relies on you yourself.

Focusing on sanook.

The first task is to re-educate yourself to associate English with sanook, instead of misery. This is a psychological challenge, like trying to learn to love eating durian if you hate it. Yet unlike the case of durian, by sheer will power you can decide to enjoy English. Whatever you love most in life, whether it is food, movies, travel, sports, history, fashion, music, or anything else, set time aside every day to experience it in English. Google best websites for food or any other subject, whatever you choose. Save a dozen of these websites as your favorites and make sure you look through them every day for about 15 to 20 minutes. You do not need to read every word of every article, since you will not have time to do so. Content changes all the time and you may mostly read headlines, but that is all right. You will have learned about something you enjoy by using English, and your brain will not be able to hate and resist the English language as it did before.

Follow up on the news.

Since most Thai people get their news reports from Facebook, TV, radio, and other Thai language sources, you are probably well informed about the news each day. Once you have an idea of what is happening, look at such English language newspapers as The Nation; The Bangkok Post; and Thailand Business News. Since you already know the main subjects of the news and some of the details, look at how a writer in The Nation, which is usually written in decent professional English, expresses it. Even if you read unconsciously, you will absorb how words follow one another in a sentence, how sentences form paragraphs, and other aspects of writing in English. You may ask yourself, how would I express a similar subject in English? Reading versions of a story in English that you are already familiar with in Thai trains your brain usefully. You will become more familiar with this type of challenge just by spending a few minutes each day doing it. It is entirely up to you what to read, depending on what interests you. For this sanook exercise, you should never read anything in English merely out of a sense of duty. Be like HRH Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and find interesting things in what is going on around you in English. If you love the Harry Potter books and have read them three times in Thai language, try reading them in English. Look in our TU Libraries collection for novels or nonfiction that you can enjoy reading. Try reading Young Adult books, which tend to be written in a clear and easy-to-understand format. Google best young adults books and see if the TU Libraries own copies of them. Young Adult books also tend to be shorter and less expensive than books intended for older readers. This is good, because you want to be able to finish fun reading before too long. The point is to enjoy what you are reading, so you will want to find out what happens next. For this reason, mystery novels such as those by Agatha Christie or thrillers by Stephen King may be good choices for fun English reading.

Listen and learn.

Try the many online radio stations available in English. Among the most famous are the BBC; America’s National Public Radio, and many others. Google “best online radio programs about X” and replace the X with your preferred activities and interests. Save a dozen radio stations as your favorites and play them as much if not more than you play Thai stations. Use them as background noise when you clean your home. Try to understand as much as possible, and if you miss something, no one cares. You will never have to pass an exam about the radio program. As in real life, sometimes we hear and understand what goes on around us, and sometimes we do not. The challenge is to get your brain to relax enough when English is spoken that the sound becomes more familiar and less shocking to you.

Looking and learning.

Websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and others are good places to try out your English comprehension skills every day with new material. If you listen to something for only five or six minutes, it should not give you a headache. Try to understand, and if you do not, just be patient. Avoid turning on English subtitles because although this will help you understand, real life offers no subtitles. If you go to England one day and visit a bakery, you will need to say in English what you want to eat, not rely on some translation. So just try to get accustomed to English whizzing by your ears and understand whatever you can. Choose your personal fun subjects to look at, selecting interviews, lectures, or other spoken videos rather than action films. Some students enjoy watching American or British TV serials with lots of violence, screaming, and cursing. These are not ideal for building up a working business vocabulary in English. With YouTube and other videos, it is also possible to follow your own professional line of knowledge. If you already know a little about a subject such as digital preservation in libraries, you should have some English language vocabulary about it. Try listening to a little of a speech on this subject. You may catch more than you suspected. Whatever you search for and mark as a favorite should be something that genuinely interests you or may be useful in the future. Each person must design his or her own program for learning English, just as no matter what coaching or training you receive, at some point you must rely upon yourself to learn to ride a bicycle or swim. Each person has individual tastes and experiences that are not the same as anyone else’s. For this reason, you can never advance as quickly in group classes as when you make a real effort on your own as an independent-minded person to improve your English. You may decide you want to spend more than 20 minutes per day but try to devote at least 15 minutes to this deliberate fun activity. It will make a difference the next time you have to speak in English or understand when English is spoken to you.

Real live speaking.

For many Thai people, it is difficult to get the opportunity to speak every day with real live farang, to practice English. This kind of speaking and listening is one main way to make progress, so think about joining such groups as the Thammasat Speaker’s Union at Tha Prachan, where English-language debates and activities are regularly held. It may be nice to organize your friends into a little informal English-speaking circle. Remember that any group of Thai people in a room will almost immediately speak Thai instead of English, destroying the purpose of the get-together. This is why so-called International Programs at universities in the Kingdom fail to improve the English language abilities of students. Unless you are absolutely determined to speak and listen to English as a matter of enjoyment, your brain will always take the easy way out and rely on Thai language instead.

(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)