Today I’ll give you guys a short break from memorization and talk about my experiences teaching Thai in the classroom. I occasionally volunteer my time to teach Thai to interested students. Most of the time I teach at Wat Washington, DC, but I’ve also taught at Wat Boston and even in Thailand. A good friend of mine teaches Thai regularly at Wat Boston, and we both use the exact same teaching methods.

Over the years we’ve made some observations about how to most effectively teach, and would like to dispel some myths in the process.

If you are reading my blog, you probably are already familiar with the difficulty of speaking Thai tones. You are probably already aware through personal experiences that Thais struggle to teach tones to you. It turns out, in many instances, that natives are poor teachers of their own language (whatever that language may be). It’s because they’ve learned the complex concepts at a very early age, and it is so subconscious they are unable to consciously explain it.

For example, in English, the word ‘butter’ is not pronounced ‘but – ter’. It is pronounced ‘budder’. The rule is that when you see ‘tt’, it becomes a ‘dd’. The native English mind subconsciously does that so deeply that they are entirely unaware of this rule!

A non-native speaker that learned a language in his/her later years would have had to consciously learn all those rules. And as such, I propose the best teacher of a language would be a fluent non-native speaker who is also a native speaker of your native language.

But don’t get me wrong – non-native speakers do have drawbacks. They often make grammar mistakes and likely have accents. How could this work? I propose that the ‘perfect’ classroom involves two teachers – the second teacher being a native speaker. He/she will act as an assistant, to answer difficult questions, help with pronunciation, and verify for accuracy.

In my classes I’ve taken such a methodology. I will teach, sharing the way I’ve learned and tackled difficult language concepts, and have a Thai monk assist me. That assistance was quite valuable as sometimes I’m not quite sure of a grammar rule, or a word is difficult to pronounce, or I’m not 100% sure of a translation.

What does this all mean to you as a student? Don’t really solely on one teacher. To maximize your language learning ability, your ‘support group’ should consist of both native and non-native speakers.