Thai for Advanced Readers. Book [Paperback]

I have just received this book and my aim was to perfect my knowledge about thai language. I started to learn thai because of my wife who is thai, and wanted to improve myself gradually. So I had looked through the available items on the market and after a thorough research I had found this author and her books. I had trustingly started to turn the pages of the beginner one. As i had dived into it, I felt this is the book what I needed to use. It was so catching, and spent more and more times with it. I was surprised how quickly I caught up. After I finished the beginner, i was able to write thai, had a word-power of over 1000 words, I understood the basic of the language, and my wife said how much good I was. Then I had purchased the intermediate, went through in a few months, and it had improved me more. This third level, the advanced, is as good as the first two. It gives u more written thai, more word to memorize. As you finished the first 2 books, your knowledge in the grammar should be excellent and this book gives you the chance to learn the writing and reading. This series of books are built up with consistency, reasonableness. I have seen various phonetic transcription, some of them are a bit misleading, but this author use the most logical phonetic transcription. These books somehow must be good books that I could learn the thai language despite I am not a native English speaker. So I can warmly recommend this book, many thanks for the author.

Advise caution in buying this book. You've probably got the other 2 and are hoping this will nail the lid shut. Wrong!!! It doesn't go anywhere!!! The format from the first two took a little while getting used to but now it seems the wheel needs re-inventing.
Too many pointless gestures as to necessary or required vocab.
Having said that the cd's are quite good though. You can have a lot of fun with some of the more advanced stuff like the tongue twisters.
Up to you but I would suggest moving elsewhere.

There exists plenty of beginners courses in Thai, but very little for people who already knows quite a bit of the language, but not enough to read books for native speakers. This book bridges that gap, and I still haven't found anything else on the same level. I started with the Linguaphone Thai course and went on to Speak Like a Thai 1-4, and Thai for Intermediate Learners. Those are good for vocabulary, but with just single sentences, or at most short dialogues they don't give much sense of the flow of language and get boring fast.

This book does not use the transcription system of other books from Paiboon, but uses a Thai system of indicating pronunciation. This means it is necessary to be familiar with Thai pronunciation rules before starting this book.

Thai for Advanced Readers is divided into three parts. Part one covers more than half the book and consists of text varying from one to seven pages in a fairly large, easy to read font, with a vocabulary list and English translation. New vocabulary is introduced at a reasonable rate giving a nice flow to the texts rather than going for long lists of related words like the intermediate course and then trying to fit those into a text.

Part two consists of a few short newspaper articles, a horoscope, and some ads. These are written in a slightly smaller (but still larger than normal Thai books) font with a heavier line, making them a bit harder on the eye than the texts in part one. Part two also comes with vocabulary lists but no English translations. Part three is a set of diverse texts; the national anthem, a Buddhist prayer, a set of 20 tongue twisters, a poem listing all the words that contains the letter ai mai muan, some thai song lyrics, 25 proverbs, a list of all the provinces in Thailand and finally, for some weird reason, a list of the 10 ASEAN countries. Some texts in part three have full English translations, some don't.

All in all this contains a lot of text for a reasonable price and helps build up reading speed and confidence. But only for fairly advanced students.