Keeping your English skills fresh.

A real challenge after taking an English language class or spending some time studying abroad is maintaining your language skills at the same level.

Although you are right to feel a sense of achievement after completing a language class or a stay in an English-speaking country, that does not mean your efforts stop there. The human brain naturally shuts out what is difficult and seeks easy paths for thinking and communication. When you are in class or overseas, your brain is exercised under conditions that you must then create for yourself in your everyday life in Thailand. Although this is not easy, if you do not do this, your English language abilities will necessarily fade with time. Like any muscle, the part of your brain devoted to language skills withers with lack of exercise. As the old expression goes, “Use it or lose it.”

Find fun things to do in English.

Since it is essential that you find a few minutes every day to devote to English in order to keep it fresh in your mind, try to find something fun to do in English. Like any form of exercise program, if it is boring or unpleasant, you will not continue to do it for the long term. The point is to find something that is genuinely enjoyable. This may take some time, but it is worth the effort. Keep in mind that language skills are not the same thing as educational levels or intellectual accomplishment.

Find your own inner confidence.

Some Thai people with almost no education speak English with confidence, using whatever small vocabulary they have to communicate with farang. Other Thais who might have Ph.Ds. are too shy to speak English, perhaps for fear of making a mistake. To gain the kind of confidence you will need to communicate in English, you must associate the English language with sanook. This is extremely challenging, since the Thai Ministry of Education presents English in a way that links it in the mind of every Thai person starting at age five with boredom, pain, humiliation, embarrassment, and annoyance. It is up to you to conquer this bad tradition and find a way to rise above it.

Read online periodicals daily.

Every day, devote some time – fifteen minutes is better than nothing – to reading online publications dealing with subjects you enjoy. This should not be things you must read in English for your job or professional interests. You should supplement this required reading with other material that is specifically intended to please you and make you feel good. It can by anything dealing with a favorite hobby or pastime, from food, movies, travel, history, sports, music, or anything else. To save time, put together a number of favorite websites in the subject of your choice and look at these rapidly each day for new material. Read the headlines and summaries, and if you see an article that interests you more than others, concentrate on that one. When you see vocabulary you are not familiar with, take the half-second it requires to Google the words for their dictionary definitions. That way even if you are reading People, Us Weekly, or other celebrity gossip magazines, you can improve your vocabulary.

Keep up with the news.

Although the news is not often fun, if you happen to enjoy keeping up with it, this can be a useful choice of reading material. Since you will already have heard or seen the news on TV, radio, or in Thai language newspapers, if you then look at The Nation, the Bangkok Post, Thailand Business News, or other English language periodicals based in the Kingdom, you will already know what many articles are about. By reading something that you already know in a foreign language, you reinforce your understanding of how to express facts and ideas with sentence structure and other basic aspects of writing.

Read books you are passionate about.

This is why if you are a great fan of the Harry Potter books, for example, and have read them in Thai language, it may be worth looking at them again, this time in the original English. Since Harry Potter has lots of odd vocabulary and unusual words, even for the native English speaker, other books might serve this purpose more easily. If you enjoy reading translations into Thai of popular British or American thrillers, murder mysteries, or other popular fiction, once you have done so, try reading through the original English version. Even if there are passages you do not understand, since you already know what happens in the book, you should be able to follow the story with enjoyment. Choose books you really care about, so that you will be motivated to turn the page to find out what happens next.

Watch movies and videos without subtitles.

As much as possible, try to avoid reading the Thai subtitles on English language films. If you have returned from England or America, you know that in real life there are no subtitles. Your brain must figure out language as it is thrown at you. Watching a film, even if you lose the meaning occasionally, is a good way to duplicate the experience of having farang talk to you in English. You may understand some things, while other things you must guess. If you lose your way or misunderstand, it is not the end of the world. If you are watching a film, TV show, documentary, or lecture on YouTube you always have the option of repeating any passage if you become confused. Also, you can add or remove subtitles as you wish for most videos. Accepting without panic that you do not understand some things is a basic step for learning how to be relaxed and comfortable using a foreign language. It is like the ability to get over the fear of water or falling off a bike in order to enjoy swimming or cycling.

Make persistent efforts to listen to spoken English wherever you can.

Since even with the best intentions, Thai people will always choose to speak Thai with each other, not English, you must make an effort to find an English-speaking group on campus where English is always used. If you do not hear English regularly, you will lose the habit of recognizing and identifying its sounds. Similarly, since Thai speakers must move their faces and mouths in all sorts of unaccustomed ways to speak English, if you stop doing this on a regular basis, whatever advances you made during your previous study will soon evaporate. If you made good friends overseas who are farang, try to make a point of Skyping with them every week to keep up the communication. Let them know that you count on them to help you to keep improving your English. If they like you, they should make every effort to help.

Learn the words to songs.

Although song lyrics to pop music are not always the most literate form of English, especially if you are a fan of heavy metal, learning the words can be useful. Any form of memorization is good, since if you learn English words by heart, they will be immediately available for you whenever you wish to use them in writing or speaking. Since most people find memorization painful, song lyrics are probably the easiest way to do this. Most people, even farang, only have a very vague idea of song lyrics, and learning them precisely as if you were going to sing them in public without a karaoke machine requires some concentration. The effort will pay off when you possess new ways of saying things in English. Again, YouTube can be your friend for this exercise.

Study some more.

The main interest in learning a language is that it is a lifelong occupation. You never complete it, because no one ever perfects the knowledge of any language, especially not a foreign language. When you finish your class or study experience overseas, try to avoid feeling that you can safely slam shut the door of that experience, because learning is over. Learning has just begun for you and the skills you acquired give you more options for enjoying future improvement. Even old native speakers of English continually learn new vocabulary and other aspects of language, which is why acquiring language skills is an ever-refreshing habit.

(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).