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collie

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http://www.highspeedthai.com

 

Has anyone used this site?

 

If so were you impressed, what are the materials like etc?

Any complaints? how is the course delivered?

 

Is it as good as the intro and users claim?

 

Your feedback is appreciated.

 

Thank you.

Edited by collie

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Get up ya dirtbird, get up...

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I have no experience with highspeedthai although I have studied several other Thai courses. My experience has been that everybody learns best differently, courses that I thought were great didn't do much for others. If money is an issue then why not search for and download a Thai course torrent? or obtain an MP3 based Thai course for free by some other method. If you get on with it you've wasted no money, if you don't maybe highspeedthai is worth a bash.

         ความจริงเป็นสิ่งที่ไม่ตายแต่คนพูดความจริงอาจจะตาย                 

The truth is immortal but people who speak it aren't - Thai proverb

Karl's Thailand - My YouTube Channel

 

 

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pimselur thai?

 

Thanks lads,

 

Do u have a link to the pimselur link PLEASE?

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Get up ya dirtbird, get up...

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sent you mail with the link on it, not sure how people feel about posting torrent links

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sent you mail with the link on it, not sure how people feel about posting torrent links

 

 

Got that, thanx, downloading as I type.

 

Cheers...

Edited by collie

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Get up ya dirtbird, get up...

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downloaded over night, very impressive, thanks again lads...

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Get up ya dirtbird, get up...

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เลือก

 

Hi Guys, anyone know what this word means? it might be a number. thanks in advance.

<p>

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เลือก

 

Hi Guys, anyone know what this word means? it might be a number. thanks in advance.

It means to choose.

         ความจริงเป็นสิ่งที่ไม่ตายแต่คนพูดความจริงอาจจะตาย                 

The truth is immortal but people who speak it aren't - Thai proverb

Karl's Thailand - My YouTube Channel

 

 

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Thanks Dr Winston, as i wrote thanks in advance i was going to mention your name, thought you would help out.

<p>

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Thanks Dr Winston, as i wrote thanks in advance i was going to mention your name, thought you would help out.

No problem. BTW if you need to translate any other words from Tha script you can always copy and paste it into this website, or even the Google translation service. I wouldn't relly on it for anything important though.

         ความจริงเป็นสิ่งที่ไม่ตายแต่คนพูดความจริงอาจจะตาย                 

The truth is immortal but people who speak it aren't - Thai proverb

Karl's Thailand - My YouTube Channel

 

 

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Hmmmmm, let me see, can this be of great help?

Since I'm starting learning Thai I want to gather useful resources.

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  • 5 months later...

http://www.highspeedthai.com

 

Has anyone used this site?

 

If so were you impressed, what are the materials like etc?

Any complaints? how is the course delivered?

 

Is it as good as the intro and users claim?

 

Your feedback is appreciated.

 

Thank you.

 

 

I am one of the unlucky person who tried High Speed Thai.

 

I was very excited at first when reading the description, so after a while i decided to order the programme, being comforted by the no question asked money back guarantee.

 

I quickly received 2 DVDs, which i installed right away, or i should rather say copy. Because HighSpeedThai is not a programme. It's a bunch of files. 5GB of data. And my disk count is giving me around 12 000 files (probably including some of the inside software files).

 

So basically you buy this programme thinking you will get something fully integrated like Rosetta or other language software. But this one is VERY different. You basically goat a 1000+ black and white text only PDF file (yes over one thousand pages of text!), and a bunch of files in different folders that you need to open one by one) and you quickly end up having your pdf reader open, your music player open, your video player open, the few related folders open, and on top of that you have the Anki software. Anki is something like the Rosetta software, but a very basic version. Again text only.

 

OK. I had bought it, so i said why not give it a try anyway. Or at least try to. Believe me it is the most user unfriendly system i have ever seen in my life! After a couple of weeks, I did contact the maker of this system to suggest him some much needed improvement, but he constantly replied by copying clients testimonials (which of course were all positive about his programme) and more or less saying that his programme couldn't be any better and that everybody is happy about it. I was kind of "motivated" to give it another try, and passed the 30 days money back guarantee without really paying attention. After a while, and many attempts to try learning with this unfriendly system, i decided to give up and contacted again the maker of the programme asking him about the money back guarantee.

 

Again i had a flow of clients testimonials who were all agreeing that this is the best programme in the world to learn Thai. May be I am the only one to find it absolutely off-putting and uninviting. I was always told that learning should be a fun process, and the 4 other languages i speak have been learnt in a fun way.

 

Having said that, the maker of the programme offered me a deal, that if i complete 10 lessons and still don't like the programme, he would give my money back. I did accept the challenge, and forced myself through the 10 lessons. Passed the calvary of a couple of hundred pages of plain text in PDF format, and the juggling with files and folders, i completed the 10 lessons. But our programme maker was still not satisfied, and wanted to know all the details of my boring learning, adding here and there very positive testimonials of other clients.

 

So i just gave up and forgot about asking my money back. It is just not worth the ordeal really.

 

So may be it is just me not liking this programme. I don't know. If any of you wish you buy my version, I will be more than happy to get rid of it at a discounted price. I would even let you try it before you buy and show you how the whole thing works. I wouldn't want you to feel tricked the way i did!

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  • 3 months later...

Hello,

 

This user is not to be listened too. He was unable to prove he had done more than simply taken a glympse at the program.

 

He posted this same message on many forums. This was his way to extort me. If you are curious about what real users who have used the program have to say about it, simply do a search. There are many reviews which talk about how the program works in great detail.

 

Anyway, he posted this in another forum and many users posted back saying just how good the program is. I guess his attempt to extort me failed.

 

His main complaint was that he had to click on the files to open then rather than having links in the PDFs. At that time, Adobe did not support links to some file types. Now the new version of acrobat allows this, so the new version contains links within the PDF.

 

Here is my reply on another forum :

 

Hi there,

 

This is Vincent here.

 

I would like to add my comments.

 

As you can see here, there are many people who are very happy with the program. The people who are reporting great results are the ones that have actually completed significant parts of the program. The ones that have not so positive feedback do not state which lessons they have actually completed.

 

Students do need to expect to spend a few hours learning how the program works and getting familiar with the tools that come with the program. It is very hard for one to assess the program without actually completing the lessons. Even if someone was to complete the first couple of lessons and give up it would be unfair for them to comment on all of the other lesson types in the program, as each type of lesson has a different structure and there are many different lesson types. The program is designed to be completed in a sequential manner as you will need to learn how to pronounce and distinguish the tones before you move onto the reading lessons. You will need to be able to read before you can do the vocab lessons and you will need to know the intermediate vocabulary before you move onto the advanced vocabulary lessons.

 

Every single file that is included in the program has its place in the learning process. Saying that the program is a bunch of unlinked files could not be further from the truth.

 

Protecting the program from piracy is obviously and important factor and sometimes this results in small changes that may have a very minimal impact on usability. The system is not programmed in any language. The program is made up of text which is in a PDF file, audio which are mp3s and wmas along with Anki files which are opened in the program Anki. The program does also include images and videos.

 

Text, audio and imagery are very powerful mediums and if used effectively can teach a language very effectively.

 

I would like to briefly talk about the user named “yvancg”.

 

On October 7 2010 he stated that he had stopped on page 48 of 1000 because the eBook was too large to print, the eBook should be in a horizontal format and there are too many files and folders. I offered my help here. I know that hundreds of people have completed these lessons and I have watch people complete the lessons first hand so I know the process well.

 

While the program is obviously not perfect like anything in this word, if one follows the instructions and completes the lessons he will get very good results, as you can see from the feedback that other users have provided.

 

The user suggested embedding the audio into the pdf, I thanked him for his feedback and noted it down as I keep all feedback from all users. Prior to his email I had researched doing just this but there were many problems doing it with Acrobat 9. Thankfully now Acrobat 10 offers more options to link pdfs to external files.

 

After the user’s trial period expired he sent me an email stating he would like a refund. Well it is clearly stated on the website that the guarantee lasts for 30 days after the program arrives in the mail. I again offered to help him get going with the program as I know there are so many people using the program with great results I was sure that I could help him get started. He then mentions that he is really on page 38 of 1000 doing the pronunciation lessons. These are the first lessons in the program.

 

Anyway, as I was generous enough to make a deal with him even though he was outside his guarantee period. The deal was made on the 16th of November 2010. The deal we made was that he was to complete up to Vocab lesson 10. If he still did not like the program after completing up to this lesson I would refund his money even though his guarantee had expired. This deal meant that he had to complete 26 lessons. I would estimate a student would spend at least 60 hours completing these lessons.

 

On the 30th of November I received an email from yvancg saying that he had completed the lessons. I was surprised. When making the deal I was expecting to hear from him after a couple of months as I know how long it takes students to complete these lessons. I then emailed back asking him approximately how many hours a day he studied. He said “I try to learn everyday for around one hour, sometimes more, sometimes less”. This made me even more surprised as I know that it is impossible to complete these 26 lessons in 14 hours. Many of the lessons would require more than 2 hours to complete. Maybe yvancg is a really smart chap with a computer like memory, so I asked him to send some of his files to me, this would have allowed me to see that he had actually had performed this momentous feat. Conveniently he told me that he had already deleted all of the files. He stated that his girlfriend has been helping him with the language and that he was already familiar with some of the sections in the program.

 

I then proceeded to ask him a few more questions about what lessons he had done so I could verify he had done what he said he had. He refused to answer my questions and told me to keep the money.

 

A couple days later he sent me an email that he is going to post his experience on a number of forums because I am not a man of my word???? At this stage I replied saying there is one easy way for us to verify that you have completed what you have said you have done and that is for me to give you a five minute call on Skype. This way I would be able to ask him a few very simple questions about the lessons he had done. Here is what I said.

 

“I am not saying anyone is a cheater or a liar. I was generous enough to give you a deal, I assume that you would be happy to demonstrate that you have completed your part.

 

Unfortunately you have deleted your files. Perhaps the best way to finish this off is for me to give you a call and ask you a few simple questions on the material that you have completed. I guess this would not take more than 5 minutes. I assume you are on Skype, we can do this over Skype.”

 

Yvanyc stated that he had enough and he was going to post on some forums. I sent this reply

 

“Hi Again,

 

I think my responses are fare, reasonable and only to be expected. As I have said, out of my own generosity I gave you this deal. I have hardly done the wrong thing.

 

If you do not want to spend a few minutes on the phone answering a few very basic questions that you would be able to answer quickly and easily that is your choice.

 

 

 

Now in regards to you problem: It is concerning that you feel you are unable to complete the lessons due to the layout. The reason it is concerning is that there are hundreds of people using the program without this problem. In the program I invite the user to send his feedback many times. And I have directly asked a number of users, "do they find the files hard to locate?" they have stated they are having no problems finding files or doing the lessons.

 

I agree it would be better to link the PDF to the files, but I have experimented with this and there are many problems doing this. I have contacted Adobe about this too.

 

The other option would be to convert the pdf to a HTML file, but even with html files there are still problems. Some browsers ask the use to download and save the file before they open it. Then there is the issue of piracy, there is no protection in HTML files. These days piracy protection measures are an unfortunate necessity.

 

So with the program the way it is now, the user has the eBook on his screen, reads through the content, the content will state which file to open. He simply clicks the audio or Anki file and listens to the audio or completes the exercise in Anki. The files are organized in a logical fashion which is explained in the eBook.

 

The pronunciation lessons state that it may be beneficial if one records himself, I am thinking of getting rid of this as some users may find opening an external audio recording problematic if they are not so good on the computer. I should be able to transform these exercises into Anki exercises. Anki has an inbuilt recording function.

 

As you are a Mac user, perhaps there is something on the Mac which is making doing what is instructed difficult. Do you think you could tell me what this is? Only about 7% of users are using a Mac. I want the program to work well on a Mac too.

 

I have been thinking more about what you have said. I think I will make a short video on how the user should use the program. This way they can watch the video before they start, this will give them a good idea of how to use the program easily and efficiently. This will also help them see if something on there computer is prohibiting them from using the program as they will be able to see how it should work correctly.

 

Thanks”

 

Before receiving this email yvanc posted his view on every thread about HighSpeedThai he could find.

 

The moral of the story is that this user had the program to try out free and if he did not like it he could send it back within 30 days. He did not do this. I was generous enough to make a special deal with him. He stated that he completed his part of the deal in what seems to be an unrealistic time. Upon asking to spend 5 minutes on Skype with the user verifying he had done what he had said he declined and posted negative feedback about me and the program.

 

Who knows really how much of the program yvancg completed? He said he was on the first couple of lessons when he stopped. He was never willing to prove he had completed any of the program on request so I guess we will never know for sure.

 

If you want to get a real idea of what the program is like youu should pay attention to those reviews by people who have completed significant parts of the program. And as you can see there are many of them and they are reporting great progress. A number of them go into great detail.

 

Perhaps the program did not meet yvancgs strict standards, perhaps something on his computer was prohibiting him from using the program as directed, perhaps he was too busy to put time into the program. It is hard to say.

 

 

Ratsima: Users are told they can upgrade Anki once they know the basics. The course should work fine with the latest Anki. The program does not come with the latest version as they seem to release a new update every week. I am not able to re-write the instructions and verify the thousands of files work with the new version every time they release a new version. I will update the version of Anki that comes with the program over the next month.

 

One user asks why the program hasn’t been published through a mainstream publisher. Well this will never happen and it is the last thing I want. The HST program will constantly be improved and updated, it is not the type of product that will be sold in bookshops due to its size and price. It is almost impossible to protect books sold in stores from piracy and in the end the publisher’s fee will be around %80.

 

I would like to thank those that have posted or emailed their feedback. I am always working on improving the program and most of the updates are as a result of users feedback.

 

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

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