Awhile back Richard made a post about how Mormons learn Thai, which you can find here:
http://solvethai.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9285
The discussion became quite heavy, and was removed on the FB group, so he re-wrote it into a blog post here:
http://itsbusinessthai.com/2014/06/01/m ... ning-thai/
I find this subject very interesting. Out of the farangs I've met who speak Thai, the vast majority have been Mormons, and they have a very high rate of success in learning the language. The post above demonstrates that they put in lots of hours into learning, and get quite immersed.
While we know that putting in the time is the key, I think that most people fail to learn and get stuck because of a loss of motivation. It is easy to have streaks of really focused study and then weeks of little active study. Mormons overcome this, and obviously their motivations is spreading the word of god, which is a huge motivation if you're a Mormon.
Does anyone know of any other religions that promote active language learning? Or is there any other set of people where their language acquisition rate is well above average?