Hey guys! Welcome to my language learning blog. Instagram was working just fine, but I realised that it wasn’t enough space to just yap and capture all the details of how the journey has been.
I’m in awe of how much I’ve learned in January, regarding languages – especially Thai! I had such a huge mental block previously, thinking that it’d take ages to become conversational in Thai. But The Holy Spirit was such a good teacher this month, and I know He’ll continue to be 🙂
The best teacher: The Holy Spirit
There were times when I wasn’t sure what to study that day, but I’d feel prompted toward different topics. One day, I was really struggling to memorise words—I kept failing on AnkiApp (HAHA).
Then, I felt led to learn the words in context, using example sentences from the Thai-English app. It sounds obvious, but at the time, it felt like a genius breakthrough I hadn’t thought of before.
Another time, I was wondering what to learn, and I felt prompted to study dates (e.g., yesterday, last month, next year, the day after, etc.). It turned out to be incredibly helpful because those terms started appearing everywhere right after I learned them!
As I practiced reading Thai script, just when things started feeling comfortable, somehow it would get harder again—more complex consonant clusters, tricky vowels, and new challenges kept coming my way.
Through it all, I give all glory to God—there’s no way I could have improved this much without Him. 🙌
Developing my own language-learning habit & system
Atomic Habits is a really good book and I think I subconsciously applied some of the principles from that book into my language learning routine.
Firstly, I invested in some good stationery which really motivated me to write and study. I brought my notebook and pen with me wherever I went (work, cafes, etc.), making it really easy to learn languages wherever and whenever. I’ve come to realise that what works best for me is A5 sized, ring binder notebooks. I like the A5 size because it’s just the right size to not be intimidating while still being practical; not too big and not too small. I like using ring binder notebooks because I find that it’s the easiest to write in.
Secondly, I made time to study in the morning before work started. I’d normally sit in the cafe on the ground floor of my office building to spend about an hour learning before heading up to get started with work.
For a long time, I wondered if I was a morning person or a night owl, but the more I ease into my full-time job, the more I am convinced that I’m likely a morning person.
Thirdly, I started using Notion to plan what content I wanted to post on Instagram — this also helped guide me a bit on what to study for Thai and Viet. I wasn’t really strict with sticking to the content plan on Notion though, using Notion was more of a way for me to brainstorm and ensure that I had enough ideas to keep up my daily posts (which has been really motivating!).
Lastly, I made it a point to keep track of the dates when I studied. I make sure to write the date for that day before I start writing in my notebook.
Thai
Let’s dive into how my languages improved this month. Thai has been my language focus since it’s the place that I believe God is calling me to for missions. Overall, I’m really proud of myself for the huge improvement of my Thai in January. I started the month unable to read and write Thai but by the end of the month, I learned over 100+ new words and could piece together sentences and speak them. Now I can also read Thai, albeit slow.
Thai Basic 1-2 Lessons
I signed up for in-person Thai classes which has been so much better for me compared to online classes. I signed up for NUS CLA Thai Level 2 online classes at the end of last year (2024) using my SkillsFuture credits, but I never actually finished it – and I found it difficult to focus when the classes were held online.
So I signed up for in-person classes this time with Stanford Language Center! The Thai teacher there is awesome – I’m really enjoying the classes so far.
I signed up for Thai Basic 1 classes first but found it too basic (since I was already at level 2 by NUS standards), so I signed up for Thai Basic 2 classes as well – and it’s been much more mentally stimulating. Both classes are held on Saturday, one class is in the early afternoon and the other is in the late afternoon.
Physical Flashcards
Early on, I knew that I wanted to work on reading and writing the Thai script. I also noticed a big pain point: recognising the Thai script in different typefaces was a huge struggle!
This lead me down the rabbit hole of creating flashcards for the vowels and consonants, including the numeral characters. I also made sure to have the same character in different typography so that I could get used to looking at the different typefaces.
Was this helpful? Yes and no. I think it was fun when I was initially putting the flashcards together, and it did help when it came to memorising the transliteration of the characters. But it wasn’t really useful in helping me memorise the characters in different typefaces since I just kept looking at only one of the typefaces most of the time. The bulk of the memorisation work came with writing rather than through the physical flashcards.
Thai Bible
Reading books is a great way to learn words with context. I initially struggled to retain individual words when trying to memorize them in isolation.
However, that changed when I started learning them through examples. Adding context and a story to each word made it much easier to remember and recall when testing myself with flashcards.
For instance, I had trouble memorizing the Thai word “ขึ้น”, which means “up.” The definition alone didn’t stick, but when I used it in a sentence—“เธอเหนื่อยแล้ว พาเธอขึ้นไปชั้นบน” (“She is tired, bring her upstairs”)—the meaning became much clearer. Plus, I ended up learning other words along the way!
Other than searching for example sentences on the Thai-English app or using ChatGPT, learning from the Bible is great as well!
Digital Flashcards using AnkiApp
I set up a Thai folder in Anki and had 150 words in my 2025 Jan deck. I’m continuing to study the words in that deck in February – hoping to get all of them the the “A” grade. If you want to see what words I’ve learned and will be studying over the next few months, join my Thai Bridgies Study Group in Anki! For more information, check out my resources page.
Thai Notebook
I won’t go into detail on what I wrote in my Thai notebook, but a TLDR would be that I started out not being able to read and write Thai at all. By the end of the month, I was writing in Thai and not using any transliteration at all. It’s been very helpful to memorise which words using which character – because some words sound the same (use the same transliteration), but actually use different characters.
Using the notebook to write and break down Thai Bible verses, song lyrics, and sentence examples, has been extremely helpful in my language learning.
Things to celebrate (Thai)
- Started in-person Thai Basic 1 & 2 classes.
- I can read and write Thai now! Not fast, but at least I’m reading correctly most of the time.
- Learned 100+ new words.
- Started memorising words using AnkiApp.
- Started listening to Thai songs.
Vietnamese
It’s been very interesting to see how I started learning Vietnamese using Thai. This has been really helpful in reinforcing my Thai language learning. I don’t have as much to share with regards to Vietnamese since Thai is my main focus. But I do want to give a special shoutout to Jaymi for her Viet notes from university! Early on in the month I also revised content from the Vietnamese freelance teacher that I had back when I was in Ho Chi Minh. Last but not least, I learned Vietnamese on Duolingo quite a bit (even subscribed to the pro version of Duolingo to get exposed to Vietnamese in an easy, gamified way).
Digital Flashcards using AnkiApp
I set up a Vietnamese folder in Anki and had 51 words in my 2025 Jan deck. I’m continuing to study the words in that deck in February – hoping to get all of them the the “A” grade. If you want to see what words I’ve learned and will be studying over the next few months, join my Vietnamese Bridgies Study Group in Anki! For more information, check out my resources page.
Things to celebrate (Vietnamese)
- Learned 50+ new words.
- Started memorising words using AnkiApp.
- Used Duolingo to learn Viet (at 2000+ XP).
- Started listening to Viet songs.
February 2025 Language Goals
I think I visualised and summarised it pretty well in my Instagram post, so I’ll just insert the images here.
Response
[…] shared in my 2025 January Progress Update that I set up a Thai folder in Anki and had 150 words in my 2025 Jan […]