Thai for Advanced Readers

Thai for Advanced Readers is a huge jump in difficulty from the Intermediate book in this series. This book consists of several one to three page passages in Thai, followed by vocabulary relevant to the passage, and finally the translation in English. This book offers a lot to learn to anyone willing to put in the time. Personally speaking, about halfway through this book I noticed a jump in my reading speed and in my ability to "sight-read" words that I had never seen before. The book has a few drawbacks however. First, as I mentioned before, there is a huge jump in difficulty. If you read the beginner and intermediate books and are expecting the next step in the progression, forget it. This book should probably fall in a series of books oriented towards reading skills. The second issue I have with this book is overall effectiveness of it as a study resource. As much as I enjoyed the challenge of this book, I can't say the vocabulary stuck with me at all, nor did it do anything to improve my day to day Thai skills. Perhaps this is more fault of the student than the book but I thought it was fair to share my experience.

This advanced book is designed to improve your Thai reading skills and add some more vocabulary. It is not a book on advanced Thai grammar and such. First of all, a few points: i) there is no romanized transliterations in this book, so you need to be able to read Thai ii) there are no grammar explanations in this book, so you need to know Thai grammar iii) there are no excercises To repeat myself: this book is just for expanding your reading skills. The reading passages and it's vocabulary aim to give you the broadest coverage possible. The first part of the book covers these topics: > talking about ones family <br />> being a student <br />> Thai food <br />> Thai geography <br />> talking about hobbies <br />> the Traditional Thai New Year (Songkran Day) <br />> university life <br />> Muay Thai (Thai boxing) <br />> religions in Thailand <br />> the Loy Krathong Day and festival <br />> the Thai language <br />> the climate of Thailand <br />> Hilltribes in Thailand (Hmong etc) <br />> education in Thailand <br />> Thai people in America <br />> a brief history of Thailand <br /> <br />- Each article has it's own vocabulary list and english translation. <br /> <br />The second part of the book gives you extracts from Thai newspapers to read, they are quite patchy and of various length, this section includes: <br />> crime and military articles <br />> article on the treatment of women in Thailand <br />> gambling <br />> world news <br />> horoscope readings <br />> job adverts <br />> business articles <br />> advertisements <br />> articles on health issues <br /> <br />- Each article has it's own vocabulary list. <br />I found these to be a good source in learning some basic slang words and jargon. <br /> <br />The third and final part is a collection of miscellaneous readings and include quite interesting things, such as: <br />> the Thai National Anthem <br />> a Buddhist Prayer <br />> a number of tongue twisters <br />> a poem <br />> some Thai songs (children's songs, traditional songs etc) <br />> some Thai pop songs <br />> Thai proverbs <br />> names of provinces in Thailand <br />> names of the ten ASEAN countries <br /> <br />- Each insert has it's own vocabulary list. <br /> <br />This is not a graded book, the readings don't become more difficult as you progress, they are on the same level - intermediate/advanced - depending on which side you stand on. <br />What should be obvious to you after reading my review so far, is that this book focuses on scope rather than depth. <br /> <br />I had to refer to my grammar book quite often though: Thai: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars). <br /> <br />This book is not an authoritative end to your studies, you will not have reached advanced Thai with book alone. <br />You also need other material to improve your listening and speaking skills, through audio material such as: Practical Thai Conversation and Improving Your Thai Pronunciation, and software material such as EuroTa

Worked through most of this book some time ago, and it is a great book. It is fun to read, and gives a good insight to Thai culture and history also. I believe some people might find a thai vocabulary in the back of the book useful.

This is a very tough course. I finished "Thai For Beginners" and "Thai For Intermediate Learners" and I still had trouble with this course. The book has vocabulary and stories / essays which uses the vocabulary. The Cd's, though, only have the stories / essays on them. That makes it difficult to insure you are pronouncing the words correctly. If you make it to this book, you should know how to read Thai. That will help you with decipher what tone the vocabulary should be and how to sound out the words. But, being a non-native speaker, I'm sure I'm still not saying the words like a native Thai speaker would. This book makes a large jump from "Thai for Intermediate Learners." I think Mrs. Benjawan Poomsan Becker should write another book to bridge the gap. This is a good course for anyone who wants to learn more about Thailand, Thai people and their customs... And for those who would like to improve their Thai reading skills.