On Saturday we kicked off Post Publishing's Career & English Tour at the AUA Language Centre in Bangkok. Strong English is often an advantage in getting a good job, so there was a lot of interest in how our Learning Channel helps improve proficiency.

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At the end of the session, these young participants seemed happy – and awake – always a good sign that the activity went well.

Career & English Tour at AUA

On Saturday morning we kicked off Post Publishing's Career & English Tour at the AUA Language Centre in Bangkok. The programme is a joint activity run by our m2fjob department and our own Learning Channel.

Suthida Maleipan, Post Publishing's Executive Vice President for Digital Media, starts things off.

Since a high level of English language proficiency and landing a good job often go together in Thailand, it is natural that these two departments work closely together. 

The participants for my session on Saturday morning were largely students and teachers from local schools and universities.  I began the program with an overview of our learning channel and advice on how to use it to help job-seekers improve their English while keeping up on the latest news at the same time.

The news is an excellent source of material for serious English learners because they can learn a lot in a short amount of time and they often already have background on many of the stories from the Thai-language media.

How much English do you learn each day? Not a lot, many students admitted to Archarn Terry. That can change in a hurry if they add some news to their learning programme.

The Learning Channel aims to make the process as easy as possible for these learners. We choose stories for them, we read the stories for them to hear and download and we define vocabulary – lots of vocabulary – in both English and Thai.

I introduced the participants to  the various sections of the site and noted that we produced content based on the latest news at three levels of difficulty: advanced, easy and very easy.

One of the nine brave participants who volunteered to be TV news readers in front of the audience.

Most importantly, I suggested ways for the participants to use our materials effectively and, more generally, how to add news to their learning program.

I, of course, am a life-long learner of Thai and I when I hear a interesting word or phrase in English, I often think "how do you say that in Thai?". And then I find out.

This works very well the other way. For much of last week, there was news of a scientific mission to a ดาวหาง. What's a ดาวหาง ? If you had taken a quick look at the Bangkok Post website, or better yet, the Learning Channel section, you would immediately find headlines like this one: "Final checks for first-ever comet landing". Obviously, the word you are looking for is "comet".

If you are a bit lazy, just looking at news photos and reading their captions will give you a vocabulary boost each day.

"Evidence. The police are searching for evidence," said this student who knew the answer before reading the news photo caption.

I also stressed the importance of listening to the audio files for stories – not once, but many times. Each story we do has a "download" button and within 30 seconds you can have your own mp3 file that you can play any time you want.

When I was learning Thai many years ago, I used to have my students record stories from my Thai textbook and then I would listen to them 10 times or more while reading along with the text.

When I first began, a passage like this one looked like a long series of Thai characters: กาเป็นนกชนิดหนึ่ง มีสีดำ เราเรียกมันว่า 'กา' เพราะมันร้อง กา กา กา.  I didn't know where one word ended and another began. But after reading and listening many times, I magically began to see words instead of letters.

I also had the students record the passages in the local dialect (southern Thai) and I quickly learned how the pronunciation system differed from central Thai. Within a year, I was speaking both dialects.

"กาเป็นนกชนิดหนึ่ง," read in southern Thai always gets a smile from the audience.

It is with vocabulary, however, that following the news in English will give the biggest benefits. In the Learning Channel we often define more than 100 words a day, and if you choose even 5 of them to remember, you will see a huge increase in your vocabulary over the course of a year.

Cut and paste unfamiliar words from our vocabulary lists and then make lists of your own. You might also want to cut and paste them into a free application like Quizlet (http://www.quizlet.com) which will instantly convert them to flash cards and quiz activities for you.

The participants show off their certificates at the end of the session.

The Career & English Tour at AUA continues through November 19 and we are planning activities for outside Bangkok as well.

You have already reached our learning channel. You can find M2F jobs here: http://www.m2fjob.com/