Thai for Intermediate Learners (English and Thai Edition) Paperback – August 15, 1998

Finally Poomsan Becker and her use of the horrible International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is gone. This is a dreadful system that has caused so many Thai people troubles when trying to read and pronounce English words. It was not designed by native speakers of English and actually is confusing and difficult to adapt to.This new book assumes you have learned everything from the basic level. It is a hard second step but it is a necessary step. All of the lessons are written in Thai. At the end of the book the English translation is provided. There is absolutely no Thai phonetic in this book. The vocabulary provided is good except at the end when they give transliteration for English names. They also give transliteration of English words where there is actually a Thai equivalent. Why would I want to now how a Thai person says the English word for Bank when there is a Thai word for that? To me that is just promoting laziness and avoiding Thai fluency.Once again you will need to buy the tapes or CD's separately. You may not necessarily need them for this level but I did. If nothing else it is a way to reassure yourself that you are pronouncing things correctly.

I love this series for learning Thai. My book and tapes came in a protective reusable plastic which is nice. The only difficulty was that the tapes it came with.. are tapes. I wouldn't mind but do y'all people out there know how hard it is to find a tape player in this day and age? My old hoopty had no tape player, and a broken CD player. My new car has no tape player at all. I looked for an adapter of sorts but they were expensive. I ended up going to a few different thrift stores and purchased two different tape players/boomboxes before I got one that worked. But if you already have a tape player its no problem. Haha. But I love Benjawan Poomsan Becker's series of books and they have helped me so much for learning Thai, especially vocabulary and writing.

I first reviewed the beginner's book in this series, and by now I have worked my way through the second volume. Since the two books are extremely similar in format, just about everything I said in my previous review applies here: a casual learner who idly flips through the pages will not get very far; a serious language learner with well-developed language study skills will be able to make good use of it. As in the first volume, a lesson consists of vocabulary lists, sometimes a bit of grammar, and example sentences. The exercises are still worthless, but at least they and the example sentences are now written without Roman transliteration. I think the best way to approach a textbook like this is to plug the vocabulary lists into an SRS (spaced repetition software (flashcards)) and use the example sentences as reading practice. But for any really substantive and extensive intermediate-level reading and conversation practice, you'll have to look elsewhere. Given the scarcity of quality Thai materials, however, especially above the beginner level, 'Thai for Intermediate Learners' is a worthy resource. The audio might also be worth a look.

This series is fantastic and at these prices, yes just buy the CD. I think that by "optional" it means that many people are taking Thai lessons at University or at a local community Thai temple such as those in LA, Austin, or Berkeley which offer Thai lessons in a classroom.I was exposed to these texts while taking University-level Thai courses for two semesters so you know they are comprehensive and use proper grammar and pronunciation. We did not buy the CD because we had a professor teaching us. More importantly, they are fun- as any language course should be. Don't hesitate to buy these, they are nearly perfect and very compact for toting around to school, to work, and overseas. The CDs can be put on an mp3 player for portability as well.

I have tried many different Thai courses over the years, and this is easily my favourite, as I find the lessons easy to work through. I only wish this was available as an iphone app, in the same way as the Thai for Beginners.

good book

Very good book for foreign students. Highly recommended!

It is really a good book, though the paper is not good as I am expected

This is a very poor product and certainly not worth the money. Most of it consists of vocabulary lists, and other lists such as public holidays, provinces in Thailand, Thai food dishes, words taken from English etc. A lot of it is written purely in Thai including all of the tests at the end of each chapter. You have to have a very good understanding of written Thai to even begin to use this book. I have studied Thai for several years and found much of it beyond me. I would not recommend buying this product - avoid.

It looks like a cheap copy. This quality is unacceptable.Print quality is very bad. See pictures.

Brilliant!

Excellent for my next step in learning to read and write this wonderful language.

Good book