Here's How Its Done

by AJ

OK, here's a great story and great advice from Tong... a student in my BAS class. Tong speaks English, Icelandic, and German (and Thai, of course).

In a previous comment she wrote:

Learning is not hard like you think!!! I was an exchange student in Iceland. Although everybody there can speak English, they tried not to talk to me in English, but they mostly used Icelandic with me instead^=^ This language is horrible!!! The alphabet and its tones are unbelievable:o) It's very hard to write, to pronounce, and to understand the meaning:'( Fortunately, I had a great host family, even now they are still good to me, and we are still keeping in touch:)

Every night, before I went to bed, mamma would come and read me a childrens book and let me repeat every single word after her. First, I thought it would help nothing 'cus I'm so stupid, but only two-three weeks later, I can see that my Icelandic looked better than other exchange. students 'cus at least I know how to pronunce the words.

Woo hoo I took an Icelandic course and a German course when I was in school there, also, and you know what... I got 8 in Icelandic, 5 in German, and 6 in English (out of ten)!!! I was very surprised and happy with those grades, but at the same time I recognized how poor my English was:( However, I didn't care much about the grades, but I always thought about how to develop my Icelandic more and more...

For the whole year in Iceland, I never felt like I wanted to stop learning Icelandic, and I kept talking in Icelandic, was always looking forward to reading children books with my mom, and kept writing a diary in Iceland:D

Yeah Yeah Yeah... These habits helped me to improve my Icelandic a lot!!! By the last 3 months, I could understand almost everything people said, and I was so proud of myself!!! I'm a very shy person, so I always need lots of encouragement to say or do something, and my host family and Icelandic and exchange student friends were supportive, so I could get along with them easily, and this helped me to become shameless:P

Finally, I felt like I could use Icelandic as a native speaker huhuhu (not now anymore"N") I sometimes learnt German at home, too 'cus German and Icelandic are a bit similar, so I could understand some words and rules by myself:)

Wow!

Reading children's books with a native speaker (her host Mom),....
communicating as much as possible in Icelandic....
keeping a diary in Icelandic,.....

Fantastic... and easy to repeat with English here in Bangkok. Maybe you dont have an English speaking host Mom to read to you, but you CAN buy English audiobooks.

Maybe you dont have English speaking friends, but you attend a university near a huge international backpackers zone (Banglumphu).

And you will, of course, be keeping an online diary (a blog) in English. Perhaps Tong should be teaching this course (while I take a vacation on Koh Tao!)