Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days and Conversational Thai in 7 Days are both quick and simple language guides for learning the fundamentals to get the most out of a vacation. Both works feature David Smyth as an author, but Conversational Thai in 7 Days also features Somsong Buasai as an author. Both of these works aim to fill roughly the same role, namely, basic language guides for usage during actual travel to Thai. They are each extremely useful in their own ways, but even though they aim to fill the same basic role, they end up filling two different roles which can be complementary.
Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days
This course includes an MP3 CD which includes a booklet in PDF format as well as a smaller booklet with an excerpt of the content for each day. The audio is recorded clearly and the pacing is relatively slow. The PDF version of the booklet is a fleshed out mini-course which begins with some common words then each day with expressions, some minor grammatical points (though these are rarely fleshed out more than they have to be to convey a point), some exercises which get progressively more difficult, then an additional conversation, the script for the main conversation in the lesson, and finally the audio track information (which is extremely useful for referencing). The small booklet basically lists the new phrases in the dialogue, then some explanations of various points.
The course covers a good number of topics in a very concise, but effective manner. The PDF booklet feels like the main course, and the print booklet feels like the review at the end. Each of them actually contributes in separate ways towards understanding the material with the PDF as the bulk of the material, and the printed booklet as the summary to tie it all together and further review. This course is extremely involved for a standard phrasebook type course (though it is in no way a phrasebook). It also feels like a lot of the material is taken from the Teach Yourself Thai course which makes it even more useful as a first step or augmentation.
There feels to be a lack of cultural information like in most of these shorter travel courses. The course focuses heavily on language and a lot less on cultural pieces. There is also a complete absence of written Thai (including pictures of signs and the usual in a similar class of coursebook). This is one of the few shortcomings in this course. The pacing is also a bit more realistic than some courses, but still a bit optimistic short of learning while staying in Thailand. In fairness, basically any “Learn [x] in [y] days” course is guilty of this though, and any timelines should be taken with a grain (or shaker) of salt.
Conversational Thai in 7 Days
This course is a bit more complicated and nuanced than Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days. I say nuanced, because even though this course is not necessarily bad, it definitely has some caveats to be aware of. The course begins with an introduction to pronunciation then delves into the lessons, each of which covers a day which covers a couple common topics which are grouped together by general theme. The course is split up into days with a morning and afternoon lesson. The morning lesson and afternoon lesson are basically just spacing to break up a lesson which would otherwise be too large to digest at once.
Each day covers a mix of conversations, cultural notes, words and phrases, grammar, and exercises. Some of the days are a bit dragged out and feel like two shorter lessons smashed together, while others feel a bit quick and dry. Ultimately, the pacing of this course lends itself to being split into many extra “lessons” compared to what the course suggests.
One thing I would note about this course, which hopefully is, or will be, fixed in newer versions, is that the course is the audio from an older version of the course (or maybe even just a similar concept of course) which has a new written course to go with it. The audio lines up roughly for some of the conversations, but feels like it ventures into a different course for each piece but still manages to pull itself back to some degree. It feels almost like someone listened to the old audio and wrote a course based on memory to fit the audio. The written course functions as an almost parallel course which helps cement some of the things in the audio portion, but also covers cultural bits and pieces.
To be quite candid, I did not even try to finish this course before writing this review due to the fact it drifted so much. As it is written by David Smyth (who appears to be mentioned in almost any Thai course in English from a Western publisher), a lot of the material fits in with the Teach Yourself courses. This feels like a great follow up to Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days or even an add on to Teach Yourself Thai and serves a different function while further cementing the principles of the other course.
The audio is also a bit lacking in quality compared to Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days. I believe that the audio came first, partnered with another course book, which was updated to fit what the course wanted to do without re-recording the audio. There are some large leaps between the audio material and the written book which require a lot of extra effort to power through and could easily discourage most learners. The suggested pacing is also at best breakneck and could use a much more realistic timeline for anyone who hasn’t been exposed to the language already.
So Which Should I Get?
If you are just looking to go on vacation or learn the basics, Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days is much better from a linguistic point of view, especially for a new learner, and coupled with a guidebook and/or phrasebook would easily get you from point A to point B, but without a lot of depth. This course is thorough in reinforcing what it teaches, but leaves a bit to be desired for actual communication. The vocabulary and phrasing is limited at best, but heavily reinforced in such a way to make it easy to come up to speed in a closer time frame to what the course promises.
If you plan to actually try and get off of the planned tourist track, but don’t want to just learn Thai for the sake of learning, you probably want to get both Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days and Conversational Thai in 7 Days. Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days will set the foundation and Conversational Thai in 7 Days will build off of it. Conversational Thai in 7 Days includes information that Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days doesn’t, builds on the language skills while repeating the same basic pieces, and manages all of this without getting too technical.
Both of these works also feel like they fit in with the standard Teach Yourself Thai course as well and can serve as extra listening practice and includes phrasing and exercises that Teach Yourself Thai doesn’t. Even though they don’t include a lot of grammar and technical points that other courses may, they also don’t wholesale omit anything (which is surprisingly common with some similar courses in other languages). They aren’t standard phrasebooks (or guidebooks) either and definitely won’t replace a phrasebook for most functions.
Conclusion
Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days is the best choice if you can only pick one, unless you’re specifically already learning in conjunction with a more detailed course. Both courses have the same author in some fashion, though each course fits a completely different role in different ways. Conversational Thai in 7 Days is much more thorough but lacks the ability to stand on its own without an external source, previous language experience, or a lot of extra effort which could be better used on another course or resource. Both are a bit optimistic about the timeline (unless you are traveling to learn), but Conversational Thai in 7 Days is definitely optimistic to the point it can be discouraging if you try to follow the days.
I would give Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days an 8 out of 10 and would only dock it points for only being a language resource only and not covering any cultural points outside of a passing mention. Conversational Thai in 7 Days would get a 6.5 out of 10 because of how thorough it is in comparison to similar courses, but gets points docked for the fact it isn’t a good first course, and the fact that the audio doesn’t really match the course contents. It scores as high as it does coasting on the fact that it is more thorough both linguistically and culturally, and works as a great second resource for learning Thai to travel despite its shortcomings.
Get Teach Yourself: Get Talking Thai in 10 Days here.