I was 26 years old when I entered the Thai Program at AUA in September of 1987. I’d just moved into a house on Ladphrao Rd – a large private home with a large yard ant it took about 45 minutes one way to get to school. The greatest difficulty I had in learning Thai was navigating the traffic!

I had chosen AUA because they were then, and still are, the only school who offers something besides the traditional programs that I had always failed miserably in. As as student, I hated being put on the spot – even when I knew the answer (which on occasion I did!) So when I found AUA, it didn’t take much to convince me to give it a year. If it didn’t work – well I could always enroll in a traditional, ‘practice makes perfect’ sort of program.

The difference of AUA was that we didn’t really study. My job as a student was to take in whatever they served up – and they served up a whole lot! This wasn’t just a language school! The job of the teachers was to keep us entertained and interested in whatever they could think up to do or talk about. They were a very imaginative bunch of people. By the end of my first class, I was thinking to myself that if all the classes were like this one, I was going to really enjoy language ‘study’ for the first time in my life. I did too!

It wasn’t all easy, especially at first. I was worried, mostly due to conditioning from schools and teachers, that I might not be doing very well. Was I doing as well as other students? Was I progressing as I should be? Without tests, how could you tell? It didn’t take very long before I realized that I was going to need to adjust to a few more things than smog, traffic, spicy food and life as an illiterate.

There were 18 students in my group – we all began level 1 at the same time. By the time I reached level 9 (the end at the time which also included a few classes based on ideas we had offered) there were 5 of us left. Beginning with level 1, students who were from all over the world, walks of life, and intellects, knew more than the founder of the program, Dr. J. Marvin Brown. Dr. Brown was a well known linguist and physicist and to date, one of the most humble and intelligent people I have ever met. I figured that probably he knew more about language learning than my student peers – most of whom were fluent in about 1 language.

So I got to talking to Brown. He was a great listener, and during my first three months of classes, I visited him a few times. How am I doing? How does he know? And while I didn’t get the sort of answers I was looking for, I got the answers I needed. Things like…

“…tests can’t really tell us how you’re doing.”

“…comparing yourself to other students in the class doesn’t really make any sense.”

“…look inside and tell me what’s happening.”

When I asked him if I was doing what I was supposed to he asked me what I was doing. I tried doing what he told me – that was to “sit back, and figure out as best I could what was going on.” and “Guess.” and “Don’t worry about what you’re hearing”.

This mindset took me three months to settle into – and once that happened, I’ve never wanted to settle out of this mode! This mode of learning has been and continues to give me life’s greatest moments and experiences.

It also seems to be a mode of existence that many adults struggle with. We want to latch onto things, nail them down clearly, and then say we know a certain thing. (more on this in a blog at a later time.) With this program I couldn’t do it. I came away each day, with a whole lot of experiences, but unable to say I’d learned even a single word! Wasn’t I supposed to be learning words? No! Dr. Brown, or Marv as he preferred to be called by friends, explained it to me something like this… Words, grammar, and all other ‘parts’ of language come from our experiences. In order to make a word, your brain needs the sounds of that language. Where does it get the sounds? From your experiences. In order to make a sentence, your brain needs the grammar of that language. Where does it get the grammar? From experiences. So I settled in and just collected the experiences.

It has been 22 years since that time. I have never once regretted a moment I spent at AUA. The fact is, language is a by-product of what they gave me. That one year of entertainment was without question, the greatest educational year of my life!