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If FSI is Audio-Lingual...... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| johndem Newbie Joined 5013 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Studies: English | Message 1 of 29 19 August 2010 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If FSI is Audio-Lingual, does that mean that it's ineffective?
Because I remember reading somewhere that according to some study(s) Audio-Lingual methods are ineffective. Also, if this is so, what about Platiquemos? Edited by johndem on 19 August 2010 at 3:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6900 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 29 19 August 2010 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wouldn't classify FSI as pure "audio-lingual" since they would then provide no explicit grammar instruction - which is clearly not the case in the FSI courses I've looked at. Platiquemos, is however, the only FSI-based course I've actually done. This is what Don Casteel has to say in the introduction: The method is known as guided imitation. It may appear new, but actually it has been used by a considerable number of teachers for many years. As it is used in this program, it combines elements of the “direct”, “audio-lingual”, “communicative”, and “grammar/translation methods. Other methodologies, such as Total Physical Response can also be used with the program. Its goal is to teach students to speak easily, fluently, with very little accent, and to do this without conscious effort, just as one speaks his/her own language without conscious effort. Looking at the number of users and advocates of the courses (and I include myself) on this forum and bearing in mind their long and successful use within the FSI and the DLI, I cannot see how they can be called "ineffective". Edited by Andy E on 19 August 2010 at 3:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6030 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 29 19 August 2010 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In theory the method is not as efficient as other methods. The newer methods have not increased the speed of learning a language nor produced a better level of skill. So about 10 years back they were trying to understand why.
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| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5362 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 29 19 August 2010 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In my opinion FSI at root is an audiolingual method (hence the drills) but the dialogues and the addition of proper grammatical explanations in the learner's language means that it overcomes the problems associated with the audiolingual method.
Working from my terrible memory of a linguistics course taken 19 years ago, the three main criticisms of the audiolingual approach were: 1) That, whilst students could speak the language being taught in the classroom, they did not develop 'real' communicative language. The theoretical criticism (from Chomsky and others) being that the stimulus/response method in things like hour long substitution drills taught language skills that were only surface deep. A person could respond to a particular stimulus (e.g., to be simplistic, the correct response to Bonjour Madame Courtoir would be Bonjour Monsieur Roux in the exercise), however, learners could only replicate their language success when the correct stimulus was applied. As language is incredibly plastic this meant that in 'real' life situations the learner was waiting for the correct stimulus and when it didn't arrive, they didn't have a response. 2) That the classroom stress on reproducing the drill error free (and thus getting positive feedback rather than negative feedback) was counterproductive as it cut out the tutor led or self led error analysis that is necessary to fully internalise language. 3) Drilling people for 8 hours a day and then sending them off to a dark room to look at slides with a cassette tape playing has nothing to do with real communication or learning. Just like a 15 year old forced to read Macbeth at school goes out of their way to avoid reading the play again, academic studies found that Army Method/Audiolingual approaches were an arduous course that were forgotten very quickly by those on it. I would say that the effectiveness of FSI is dependent on the context it is used in. If you are taught by a drill sargeant the above criticisms would probably be true. If you are taught by a linguist who understands the need to 'go off piste' from time to time the above criticisms would probably be less true. However, most people now use FSI as part of a long term self learning programme - the drills are not being used in a Pavlonian fashion, but to practice variations in grammar. A self learner tends to focus on their errors in a productive way - i.e. what mistake did I make, how can I correct it and they don't spend 8 hours a day going through the same drill over and over again but focus on communication. (My apologies to people who have a better/fresher memory of the criticism of the audiolingual method - the above is from memory). Edited by Elexi on 19 August 2010 at 4:30pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5580 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 5 of 29 19 August 2010 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find FSI is best tackled in short bursts of enthusiasm because it ASSUMES highly motivated learners and no time is spared to help motivate you, if you're not careful you end up going through the drills like a zombie and then you learn very slowly. That said if you can bring your own motivation they are definitely effective. The only method I have tried that was BOTH fun AND effective was Michel Thomas, but his courses only teach grammar, miss out basic elements that he considers unimportant (basically anything that doesn't effect comprehension, for instance nobody will misunderstand you if you say "mi hija está enfermo), and he died before he completed them (and as has been pointed out many times in this forum, to judge by the new "MT Method" courses he clearly took his secrets to the grave, the sole exception IMO being the Dutch course). As far as learning vocabulary is concerned there are lots of fairly effective methods and none outstanding, but the one that comes closest to being FUN is Assimil IMO, which is why I am a convert. All this said, the good thing about FSI is that they are the ONLY courses I know of where you can say before you start, "if I do EVERYTHING they tell me to in the WAY they tell me to do it then I will speak this language to B1-B2 at the end". I know of no other courses where this is true.
By the way Andy E, Platiquemos (which I bought in late 2007*) is VERY SLIGHTLY altered from the FSI Spanish Basic Course, in some ways for the better, but some of the differences are quite funny if your SOH is in anyway similar to mine, e.g. "Jaime, el alto con lentes" is "la gordita de las gafas" in the original * Johndem, I don't regret buying this even though it can be illegally downloaded so you can be sure it works! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5580 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 6 of 29 19 August 2010 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wouldn't know whether the FSI courses are audiolingual, but regarding how THEY answer to the above points @(1) Response drills are only a tiny part of an FSI Basic Course, there are many other drills designed very effectively to teach you how to manipulate grammar. The Spanish Basic Course drills are very smartly designed to catch you out as soon as you go into "mindless zombie mode", something that happens over and over again btw, but sadly that is not true of the Programmatic Course (it's biggest weakness IMO). The drills in a Basic Course are so clever, it takes a little while before you realise that they re-present everything from a variety of different angles so that although each stimulas-response pairing is "surface" the whole effect is something much deeper. On several occasions I have been working through a unit several times when I have suddenly had what I can only describe as an "epiphany" about an aspect of Spanish Grammar, and feel sure I see it now the same way as a native. They don't always (or sadly for my Spanish even usually) reach these heights, but they always go AT LEAST as deep as any other course I have seen. I only wish they did an Advanced Course because I feel sure I would be at A2 by now, progress post FSI is much slower :-( @(2) I bet that happens a lot. As I said FSI courses do not consider it THEIR business to take you by the hand and do your thinking for you (as so many inferior courses seem to do). My bet is that students ARE expected to analyse their own errors, the drills are your core tools, not the whole method...at least that seemed like common sense to me. @(3) this is a very valid criticism of FSI. The only thing I can say is that if you don't REALLY want to learn a language you're unlikely to succeed anyway...and if you do then you'll find a way to motivate yourself and generate your own excitement. If you are forced to read Macbeth at school then you want exciting motivating explanations and examples from a brilliant teacher. If you are reading it at home without a teacher then you WANT all those intimidating notes and comprehension excercises etc that so intimidate the schoolchild. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5808 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 29 19 August 2010 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Some of" the problems, certainly, but not all of. You are quite correct in the classical complaints against audio-lingual, but I don't hold with them exactly. First off -- I see nothing wrong with making no errors if you are learning the language correctly. Good teaching can help build a student's internal model correctly. The problem is that getting the drills right doesn't rely on an accurate internal model, so it doesn't teach a good internal model. IMO, errors (or lack of them) are irrelevant. The fundamental problems with drilling are still present in the FSI courses. Drills rely on repeating a pattern. This is to teach you the pattern and give you the opportunity to practice it, but in reality, you aren't practicing the pattern at all. What you are really practicing is the vocabulary you are substituting into the pattern. The production of language starts by choosing and recalling the appropriate language elements from deep inside the brain, but when you are reusing a pattern, you just keep it in working memory and process it mechanically. Very little need for choice, and no need to recall the structure. But then you've got to start recalling the vocabulary, which requires concentration and distracts you even more from the grammar that you were supposed to be practicing. This is where MT really comes into it's own. By keeping vocabulary to a minimum, he gives the student time to think about grammar, and he changes the structure quite radically from prompt to prompt, which forces the learner to recall the grammar each time. I'd also like to pick up on Random Review's point about fun and effectiveness. Fun is the feeling we get from mental stimulation. Learning is pure mental stimulation. Boring things cannot therefore be effective learning tasks. Everyone agrees FSI is boring, so FSI cannot be good. However, there's clearly a lot of information in there, but it's left to the learner to do the actually learning -- it doesn't seem to be "teaching". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6900 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 29 19 August 2010 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually I never found Platiquemos boring at all, but I never repeated things ad infinitum. If I got a drill first time and without effort it was done as far as I was concerned - if I didn't, I repeated it. and a further point...
That depends on the drill - and what you focus on when doing it. I can recall one particular issue I had with Spanish that only Platiquemos and the relevant drills were able to cure. I had an issue with Spanish demonstratives (pronouns and adjectives) - I invariably reversed them using ese for this and este for that. In my mind, I had the 's' of the former and the 't' of the latter married up to their English equivalents. Since doing the drills (and I had to do them over and over), I don't do that anymore. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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