Who Ploy is
Ploy was raised in a small village outside Surin, in Thailand's Isan region, in a family that spoke Isan Lao and Thai at home. She taught herself English from cassette tapes starting at age nine — years before she ever had a real conversation with a native speaker. She remembers exactly how that felt: knowing hundreds of words and freezing the moment she had to say one out loud to a real person.
She became a teacher so that gap would close for the next generation. She still teaches in the village schools around Rattanaburi, Surin, and still spends her days doing the thing she has always done best — sitting next to a child who is scared to speak, and staying there until they are not.
"Tongues, like muscles, only get strong by being used. This is a place where children can use theirs without anyone laughing."
From one classroom to a set of free sites
Everything here started small: a laminated word list and a phone with a text-to-speech app, used with a handful of students at Ban Han Hee School. It worked. Children who would not say a word in front of the class would say it to a screen, over and over, until it felt normal in their own mouths. That loop — look · listen · speak — became the seed of this site, and then of the others.
EnglishTeacher.com
The daily-practice half of the story. A free tool where children build vocabulary and pronunciation one word at a time — 2,919 words across 81 topics, a dictionary of 82,683 words, and Ploy Hears, a ten-week clinic for a whole class.
Practice →USAEnglish.com
The performance half. Every education district in Isan already runs a free English Story Telling competition, judged by teachers. USAEnglish.com puts prize money behind it and brings back the final: the ten best compete live in Khon Kaen in April 2027, travel paid.
See the competition →The two sites are built for the same child at two different moments. EnglishTeacher.com is where a shy nine-year-old learns to say "elephant" without flinching. USAEnglish.com is the stage where, a few years later, that same child might stand in front of an audience in Khon Kaen and tell a five-minute story in English. One is quiet, private, repeatable practice. The other is a spotlight. Thai children needed both.
The story so far
A gold medal at Ban Han Hee School
Ploy, a primary-school girl in Rattanaburi, stands up at งานศิลปหัตถกรรมนักเรียน and tells a story in English well enough to win gold. She gets a certificate. There is no prize and nowhere to go next.
A village classroom in Isan
Ploy starts using a simple listen-and-repeat drill with her students — no app, just a phone and patience. The students who practice daily outpace the ones who only study grammar, by a wide margin.
EnglishTeacher.com goes online
The classroom drill becomes a free website: press one button to hear a word, another to say it back. No login, no ads, no score that follows a child home. Just the loop, available on any phone.
USAEnglish.com puts money behind the competition Thailand already runs
Ben and Ploy commit ฿250,000 of their own money to the district Story Telling competition — prize money for children and their coaching teachers, and a live final in Khon Kaen in April 2027 with travel paid.
2,919 words, and rain mode
EnglishTeacher.com grows to 2,919 words across 81 topics, adds the dictionary and Ploy Hears, and starts telling the truth about what works when the internet does not. The monthly progress log is here.
Free forever
EnglishTeacher.com has no ads, no subscriptions, no accounts, and never will. If you find it useful — for your own children, for a classroom, for a community center anywhere in Thailand — please use it. Tell other teachers. Tell other students. That is enough.
— With love from Isan, Ploy & Ben
Are you a teacher?
We built a dedicated page with homework ideas, printable word lists for all 81 topics, and how this site connects to the district Story Telling competition and the free lesson plans at USAEnglish.com.
Visit the Teachers page →