Is this the way to learn a language?
The following is from a teacher of English in Thailand.
Thatchakorn Nimsakulthamrong Just want to share with you that, I am running the English Language Immersion Camp in Chiang Mai, Thailand for over 8 years after twenty years of a conventional and simi Immersion program teaching. We have a resort like camp in the middle of the city, our students love it. The theme is students have to be in the camp 24/7 for 24 weeks and using only English.
We have trained teachers in the classroom and facilitator outside the classroom. Students will have to admit that they have to change their life style completely. We are teaching group XI at the moment. Majority of our students are professional in different field, such as nurse, doctor, lecturer, teacher, etc.
We have student who came with very basic English and leave the camp with IELTS overall of 7.0 with speaking band with 7.5.
The trick of success story is practice, practice and practice and bring your heart. We are the only Immersion camp in Thailand doing such a crazy job like this. It is a hard working for our team, but the turnover is great and no comparable. I hope this can help you.
Would you like to have 6 months speaking only Spanish in the middle of your city?
13 Answers
Learning English (ha) lol 
I suggest they learn how to speak it and write it before making an article about it. Let alone teach it.
Yet, I have the same circumstances trying to learn spanish. No pun intended
The idea of the camp is nice.
Actually, sorry, but to learn Spanish I would prefer to visit aSpanish-speaking country, not Thailand, however interesting it may be in other respects.
We used to run intensive courses in Barcelona. I used to teach on the English Summer ones as well as working on the management team throughout the year.
It's a quality place.They still do them. Here's a link ESADE
It definitely sounds like fun!
With all this Basic English and sub-sub-Basic English of both native speakers and those who learn it as a second language to advance their professional careers in other countries in medicine, or teaching, or some such thing, just imagine the professional and technical articles in supposed "English" that might result. So much labor and all that, and so little Tristram Shandy. Just imagine....
"Basic English is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language. Basic English is, in essence, a simplified subset of regular English. It was presented in Ogden's book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). Capitalised, BASIC is sometimes taken as an acronym that stands for British American Scientific International Commercial.
Ogden's Basic, and the concept of a simplified English, gained its greatest publicity just after the Allied victory in the Second World War as a means for world peace. Although Basic English was not built into a program, similar simplifications have been devised for various international uses. Ogden's associate I. A. Richards promoted its use in schools in China. More recently, it has influenced the creation of Voice of America's Special English for news broadcasting, and Simplified English, another English-based controlled language designed to write technical manuals.
What survives today of Ogden's Basic English is the basic 850-word list used as the beginner's vocabulary of the English language taught worldwide, especially in Asia..."
wiki
Whole populations of language learners immersed--with one another--speaking only the language they are learning. This may be in microcosm exactly the way Classical Greek turned into Koine, except in reverse. That is: how "English", given enough time and a sufficient number of emigrating physicians and nurses and such from such "resort-camps", becomes in the end a tonemic language.
One is seldom reminded of U.S. "musicals", but there is something about this particular form of immersion that is remindful of, say, "The Music Man."
"We have student who came with very basic English and leave the camp with IELTS overall of 7.0 with speaking band with 7.5."
Ah, learning English for the purpose of, well--it is obvious--passing certain qualifying examinations.
Three guesses why.
Moreover, this student, who "leave the camp", if anything like his or her teacher, left with a collection of numerical scores, whatever that amounts to, and with still "very basic English."
"[S]peaking band" is downright precious.
Presumably if one is to be immersed--especially "24/7"--while learning any language, one might like to have those among whom one is immersed bring along various and sundry articles, especially if the language in question has them.
"The trick of success story is practice, practice and practice and bring your heart"
In the context of so many doctors and nurses being trained in English, this particular passage acquires several doubtful casts, ranging from the comic to the economic to the outright Gothic.
????? ?????????? ???????--Médico, cúrate a ti mismo.
