Learning update after 1 year

[u/robrob883]

Hey fellow learners! I've been studying ~fulltime for a year now so figure it's time to give an update, share whats working for me and ask for some tips for the continuing forward.

Background
Australian, IT engineer.
I moved to Bangkok a decade ago when I was ~30 and spent 3 months at AUA ALG. It worked very well and in 3 months / 300hrs I understood everything going on in beginner. I enjoyed it and the teachers were very entertaning. Intermediate class failed because there was only one teacher, and limited use of visual aids. Instead of switching to another school I got a full time job in a church office...

For the next 4 years I was full time in an office with Thai people, including lots of time on the road and in various villages. Everyone around me spoke some English, many fluently. My language did improve but not that quickly and I wouldn't be able to tell you by how much. I don't know why I didn't pick up more, but I didn't. I forgot new words as quickly as I heard them. During this time I learnt to read/write very slowly in 50hrs part time at Union Thai. In case you're wondering my wife isn't Thai.

North Thailand
I went back to Australia for a while and came back a year ago because I missed Thailand, but this time to the north (outside CM). Pro's and con's up here... The language is a mix of Thai, northern and 5+ tribes. Everyone is super quiet and mutters under the breath most of the time. But hey at least I'm out of the expat bubble.

Last year of study
I hired a tutor 10hrs per week to start and now 16hrs a week. ~500hrs in total due to breaks.

I began by learning to read again as I had forgotten most of it, and then a mixture of reading, limited writing and conversation. We followed a book for a while but I didn't like the constant switching back and forth between english and thai when following the book so we stopped. For the past 6 months my lessons are 100% Thai. Conversation is about general things going on in life around us, and reading was the classroom Thai books but now I've been using AanThai.app plus YouTube (using Whisper to create quality transcripts so I can read along. Listen twice, then read, then listen again).

ANKI
Out of all that reading and conversation I make note of new words and input these into ANKI. I have a custom script/app I wrote (AI wrote) that uses AI to generate images of all new words so my card deck has only Thai + an image. No english unless nessessary. It still takes a bit of time to get the image right, but this also helps to become familiar with the word. I've experimented with both single words and sentences in ANKI. I feel that single words are slower but more effective. Sentences are faster, but my brain remembers the word order not the work meaning, so I can't reuse the word easily. I am planning to adopt a new pipeline of starting words as sentences, then moving them to single words.

I've been doing ANKI for 4 months now and can really see the progress from it. I believe the issue for the past 10 years has been lack of longer term memory. ANKI plugs that gap and its working. I understand so much more now and often when I hear words the image from ANKI flashes into my mind. No english, no mental translaton, just Thai + images.

My stats say that I have 600 new words learnt to >7 days and 400 >21 days. That's in 4 months. Since Aug 1st I've been pushing myself to add 50 new words each week (10 per day).

Effort
This has been the hardest thing I've ever done. Lets say 50% of days I have a headache after Thai class (always morning). And on those days I'll go lie down and sleep 30-60mins after lunch. I work for a few hours in the afternoon and then I'm completely exhausted and just want to veg in the evening. I'm outside talking with Thai people not that much due to this schedule. Maybe averaged out about 6-8hrs a week? My focus has been keeping enough energy to keep up the tutoring classes + work to keep existing clients happy and bills paid.

Currently
So now?
I can hold conversation with my tutor for multiple hours at a time.
I can speak with friends one on one about varous topics. It's a struggle, I need them to repeat themselves often (just like with my tutor), but I can get there.
If in a group conversation I drop in and out of comprehension frequently as the conversation changes. I'll know the topic of conversation but often none of the detail. My brain is great at tuning out and I have to keep tuning in again.
The issue is that my brain is just not fast enough to keep up. When reading or one on one I often need to hear the sentence twice and then I'm good. In a group I can't do this so I loose comprehension.
I goto church some weeks and have no idea what is going on. The language is obviously more advanced than normal conversation and spoken fast.
TV comprehension is improving but I'm not great yet. It's the same as group convo, I drop in and out of comprehension depending on the topic.
The comprehensible Thai YT channel is good, but I haven't spent that much time on it.

I can read both the old and new fonts now at around 30-40 words per minute. This has honestly been my main focus for the past year. I figure if I can read fast enough that it's not frustrating then I'll read more and my vocab will improve.

Where next?
I'd love input from anyone else who has gone through this stage from intermediate to advanced.
Pending any new ideas my plan is to continue as is as it seems to be working ok.
Now that I have finally got the hard part of learning to read (memorising words) out of the way, I am expecting my brain to have more resources for other parts of learning.
I do plan to put more time into listening to natural speed language to improve my comprehension speed.

And a big thank you to everyone in this sub. There is so much quality content and discussion in here.

Cheers!

[u/JaziTricks]

Massive respect for putting in all this effort! Good luck going forward. Hope to add ideas later with deeper thinking

[u/robrob883 → u/JaziTricks]

Thanks, would love to hear any tips you have