so i finally got the results from that government thai exam that i took last december. i passed (barely) with a score of 66. a 51 is a passing score and from the 250 or so students that took the test, approximately 150 passed.

my score breakdown was 8/20 on the dictation, 24/34 on my essay about food which has benefits, 23/30 on reading comprehension, 11/14 on the part where i had to read something out loud. it’s interesting to see that my big problem with thai is pretty much the same one i have with english, i’m a lousy speller … but a great talker. i think this problem with being a lousy thai speller will change tho as thai is 97% phonetic, if your ear can properly differentiate the tones and you can memorize the grammar rules you can pretty much spell any word correctly once you’ve heard it. there are a few exceptions, most are words that came from sanskrit or pali but even the exceptions tend to follow some rules.

i took dec and jan off of thai school, but since feb 1st i’ve been back in school. i switched schools and am studying with this amazing teacher at summa language and cultural institute over on sathorn for 3 hours a day mon-fri. we’re working basically on two things, improving my vocabulary so can i become a better writer and trying to get rid of my accent. written thai uses a much bigger vocabulary than spoken thai, often involving lots of words that are really close in meaning but actually different. each day the teacher picks a theme and gives me about 5-10 words that follow the theme along with definitions in thai. the differences between many of the words don’t really translate well into english, in fact a thai/english dictionary would often translate them all as the same thing. i remember hearing once that eskimos have hundreds of words to describe different types of snow, klingons have hundreds of different battle words and so far it seems that thai’s have zillions of different words to describe emotional states. for example, one day we had 13 different words that all roughly translate into being bored. the context in which you use one over the other differs on how bored you are, if you are bored with something you like (had it too much), bored with something you don’t like, bored with someone else’s behavior, etc … we also had 16 different words about being happy. with usage varying based on the source of the happiness, if it is an all encompassing happiness that prevents you from wanting to do other things, a happiness that comes from seeing beautiful things, etc ….

as far as my accent goes, my teacher stop and corrects me every time i pronounce a word even slightly wrong. she also has me record something every day and then she goes home and listens to it and writes down common tones and patterns that i have trouble. then i re-record the passage along with a new passage the next day. at the end of the month she says she’ll burn all of my recordings onto a cd along with her recoding the passage correctly. i’ll probably upload some of them ….

here’s the results letter that i got from my thai exam, i have to go down to their office to pick up a certificate with my photo on it, but have been too busy teaching and studying to get down there during business hours. the photo i gave them is pretty scary, i’ll upload it for sure …..