Today is the kickoff of the Add1Challenge, a 90-day language learning challenge with an end-goal of holding a 15-minute conversation with a native speaker. It’s minimally structured, with a few checkpoints and tasks along the way. Participants learn individually, but the support from the community is phenomenal.
I participated in one Add1Challenge before, learning Spanish, but unfortunately I did not successfully complete all the checkpoints. (Ironically and not regrettably, a 3-week trip to Mexico threw off my more formal Spanish learning.) This time, because at the end of these 90 days, I’m moving to Thailand (!!!) I think I’ll be more diligent about making progress and completing the challenge.
Also part of participating in an Add1Challenge is committing to either a punishment or reward for the end of the 90 days, as additional motivation. Topi actually came up with my reward idea: if I successfully complete this challenge, he said he’d get me new running shoes for going to Thailand! And for myself, I’m going to get a few new things too, because I got rid of almost everything when I left California and what I do have left is all kind of old and ratty. But only if I complete the challenge; otherwise I’m moving to Thailand with old, ratty stuff!
For this first week, I’m going to focus on the alphabet, because I strongly believe the various Romanization “systems” for Thai are terrible and misleading. But because speaking and listening, rather than reading and writing, are the emphasis of the Add1Challenge, my method this week will probably be to read and spell text out loud until I can do it without struggling. (I’m already somewhat familiar with the alphabet and sounds of Thai, so this is feasible to do in a week – it’d take way longer if I were just learning it!)