The USPeak Thai workshop was held on the 4th and 5th December 2015. Joash Seng, a Year 4 Economics USP student, taught the freshmen conversational Thai, having taken an elective Thai language course in NTU.
This workshop was conducted due to the USP Travel Overseas Programme (TOPS), which USP freshmen will embark on their week-long learning journey to Chiang Mai, northern Thailand in early January. In this special elective course, scholars will get to explore the many facets of the local culture, from healthcare to tourism, research in groups under the mentorship of USP faculty, and present their findings in the form of a documentary or photograph exhibition panel.
The first session of the workshop, which was held on 4th December, was privileged to have Joash’s friend, Grace, a native Thai speaker to help conduct the lesson. Participants found the workshop helpful and interesting.
Daryn Tan, a freshman from the School of Biological Sciences, reflected “I think it was really good that a native Thai speaker came to facilitate the workshop with Joash. You can actually hear how two people converse in Thai, and the unique cadence of the language. If I’m not wrong, she’s also a Thai language teacher outside, and she can come up with many interesting ways to help us remember certain Thai words.”
USP freshmen at the second session poring over Thai written dialogues.
The workshop on both days was focused on pronunciation, and on how to hold basic conversations in Thai. In one conversation practice, the participants learned to introduce themselves and ask a local for an interview in preparation for fieldwork research.
Sue Qin, an Economics Year 1 student, said, “The workshop was very helpful in that I managed to learn some simple words and phrases. But it would perhaps be better if we could focus more intensively on the pronunciation of important phrases and words we would frequently use.”
Tone is a key issue when speaking and learning Thai, as with Chinese. However, the accents marking tones on Thai words represent different tones from those in the Chinese romanized script, Hanyu Pinyin. That was perhaps a major cause of confusion for Chinese speakers.
Xian Cher, a Year 1 USP student studying Linguistics, evaluated thoughtfully, “Well, we have to concede that we cannot simply pick up the Thai language overnight. The workshop was great, but I guess there could be more instalments.”
Claudia, a Year 2 USP student in Wee Kim Wee School of Communication Studies, commented, “I think the workshop was really useful and well-tailored for us as we came to the workshop clueless about the Thai language. The lesson was rather comprehensive in giving us a preview of possible conversation scenarios in Thailand.”
Participants of the first session posing with Joash and Grace (left, back) at the end of the workshop.
Overall, participants found the workshop well-planned and useful as a crash course and introductory lesson practical for usage in their study trip to Thailand. The USPecial series thanks Joash for taking time out to plan and conduct the lesson for his USP juniors.
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