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Comparing various editions of FSI Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 9 03 March 2005 at 2:45am | IP Logged |
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There are now several companies that sell FSI Spanish under various names, each in a different format.
So far I found the following versions: -Audioforum -Barrons -Platiquemos -LearningSpanishLikeCrazy (are there any others?) I think it would be useful to compare those releases so that people who want to invest money in those programs know which one to choose for their goals. If we could get all releases in one place for a few people to compare, I am confident we will make interesting observations. What criteria should we look at when comparing the releases? Number of lessons Some of these programs only cover the first two levels of FSI Spanish. I think it's very important to know where the program you have chosen stops before you start. Format Does it come in paper format with tapes, or on CDs with the book in PDF? Sound quality Several publishers claim to have 'remastered' the tapes, but it is never clear what they mean. Is there any difference in quality? Extra material Some publishers have added new material to supplement the US government original. Is it any good or just a marketing thing to differentiate it from other FSI releases? Pricing There are big differences in prices. Are they worth it? Reputation of the publisher When ordering online one of these FSI Spanish incarnations, often all you can see is a one page website. Are these reliable suppliers or just fly-by-night operations? What else should we look for? What other releases of 'FSI Spanish' is there? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 9 03 March 2005 at 3:16am | IP Logged |
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Ok, I'll try to answer for Platiquemos:
Number of lessons The complete program has 55 lessons. iTunes reports Platiquemos on my computer as 614 tracks, weighing in at 1.32 GB, and lasting 2 days. Windows Media Player shows Platiquemos as 614 tracks, lasting 48:51:45, and taking up 1.31.GB. Linux reports the whole program, with the pdf files as 2.69 GB Format I purchased the all digital (mp3/pdf) version on data CDs. I think they also sell an audio CD version which is more expensive, and a downloadable version which is cheaper. Unfortunately, the downloadable version wasn't available when I bought it. My copy came with no printed materials. Sound quality I think I'd have to rate the sound quality as poor, but usable. There are many obvious splices, there are unexpected changes in the level, and in some early lessons it's obvious that the speech has been slowed down. The program is completely understandable and I have no problem working with it. Some people might find the non-studio quality annoying though. Extra material The book contains cultural notes and reading selections. I don't think they were in the original program, but I'm not sure. The audio includes a music selection in each lesson. There are more voices on the Platiquemos version. And Juan has been replaced with Juanita. The gender difference makes the dialogs easier to follow. I'm not positive, but I think that many of the drills have been expanded. I say that because there seem to be newer recordings spliced onto the end of older ones in many drills. Pricing The complete downloadable version is US$199. Reputation of the publisher I was concerned about this, so I decided to call. The author, Don Casteel, answered the phone himself. We talked about the program. We spoke about the Pimsleur program. And we talked about language learning in general. It was a very pleasant and interesting conversation. After that, I was more than happy to fork over the money. The CDs arrived promptly, nicely packed it a canvas CD case. Edited by heartburn on 03 March 2005 at 6:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 9 03 March 2005 at 9:26am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your post Heartburn!
Do you know the exact total time length of the audio files? Is there any printed material that came with the CDs? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 9 03 March 2005 at 10:28am | IP Logged |
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The version that I have has no printed materials at all. All of the text is in the pdf files. I guess that's how they keep the price down.
I will get a more exact duration for the audio files tonight. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 9 03 March 2005 at 6:03pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, Windows Media Player shows Platiquemos as 614 audio files, lasting 48:51:45, and taking up 1.31.GB.
I'll edit my original post to reflect that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 9 04 March 2005 at 10:14pm | IP Logged |
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I have a question for someone who has seen/done
audioforum or multilingualbooks advanced spanish A/B. Are there actually 60 lessons in total? What I mean is does Advanced Spanish B actually have lessons 46-60, and are lessons 56-60 all text? With Programmatic Spanish, there are 50 lessons, and the last 5 (46-50) are all text and no audio as far as I can tell. I ask this because I seem to recall in one of the Barrons Mastering Spanish books they mention a lesson higher than 55. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 9 04 March 2005 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
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Learning Spanish Like Crazy may include (depending
on which deal you get) FSI Programmatic Spanish Vol I and Vol II. Number of Lessons FSI Programmatic Vol I has 25 lessons. FSI Programmatic Vol II has 25 lessons too. The last 5 lesons of Programmatic Spanish Vol II are all text, no audio. Format CD, or MP3 in the download edition. Documents are pdf. They appear to have been scanned from the original FSI textbooks. Sound Quality When LSLC says "digitally remastered", I think they mean they may have used audio editing software to reduce tape hiss in pauses. The audio does seem to be lifted from an Nth generation recording, not from the original government reel-to-reel (or whatever the original media was). The sound quality of LSLC's FSI Programmatic Spanish may be similar to Barrons in this respect. Extra Material Depends on the LSLC deal, includes "learning spanish like crazy" lessons, which are similar to Pimsleur in method. Insults and Vulgar insults (about 8 minutes of audio and a transcript). Dichos (sayings) about 8 minutes of audio and transcript. May have access to "teleseminars" or recordings of teleseminars. The teleseminar recordings don't seem to be all that great as far as bang for time spent. It's a little like Michel Thomas, though perhaps with less preparation on the part of the instructor, and more students, which may water the content down further. Pricing $49 - $349 depending on timing and extras. Reputation of Publisher LSLC seems to be a legitimate operation. 60 minutes (TV News show) had a segment on "underground marketing" a while back. 60 minutes showed a company that hired people to sit in coffee shops, play a video game, and strike up a converstations with others about "look how cool this game is". They are actually underground marketeers. The target in the coffee shop wouldn't know the person they met in the coffee shop who "turned them on to this cool game" was actually an employee of the gaming company. Similarly, I wonder if LSLC is part of a larger marketing network and may be trading testemonials (or just having abuela, tio, primo, and hermana doing rave reviews ;). Edited by luke on 06 March 2005 at 2:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Platiquemos Hexaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Panama platiquemos-letstalk Joined 7165 days ago 126 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish | Message 8 of 9 22 April 2005 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
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Hello, all. I'm Don Casteel, the "author" of Platiquemos. "Heartburn" did a pretty good job of explaining the program, but here is some potentially useful background.
First, Platiquemos is based on, not copied from, the FSI Basic Course in Spanish. Platiquemos is copyrighted (does that word exist?) as a derivative work. All of the others mentioned are public domain, and can be freely copied and sold by anybody. Platiquemos comes in four different versions: "hard copy" (printed books and audio cd's); "mixed" (printed books, audio in mp3 on CD-Rom; "digital" (audio in mp3, text in .pdf on CD-ROM; and "download"--audio in "zipped" mp3, text in .pdf. There is a wide range of pricing, of course. The use of programs with or without the book before you has been mentioned. When the FSI Basic Course was originally published in 1957 there was no such thing as even cassette players--to use the audio you had to go to a language lab and sit in a booth. So the book was always there, and while it recommended doing the drills and exercises with the book closed, I'm pretty sure cheating was more the rule than the exception. In any case, language learning, while not intellectually difficult, is time consuming. It therefore becomes important to try to take advantage of those little bits of otherwise wasted time--driving to work, waiting for a plane, etc. I, at least, don't want to be driving on the same street with somebody who's trying to use Platiquemos with the book in front of them! That's why much of the editing I did was to make the program more useable "hands off". This mostly consists of more English prompts in the audio (the voice is mine, for better or worse). Audio. First, in my opinion and that of many native speakers, the audio in the beginning of the original FSI program was much to fast for learning, and lacked regional variation. It sounds like both of the guys (and the PhD who directed it whose name slips my mind now) were in a contest to see who could talk fastest. So in Platiquemos, where the original audio has been preserved, it has been slowed down by 10%, which is about as much as you can do without too much distortion. It is my firm opinion (notice I said opinion) that learning good pronunciation at a slower pace can easily be speeded up when and if desirable. The garbled pronunciation that's likely to result from trying to mimic the Cuban accent type speakers in the original Basic Course, though, will be a problem that will later be hard to correct. I also wanted to make sure that every major accent area of Spanish was represented, including a Spanish-as-a-foreign language speaker (me, I'm Consul Harris in the dialogues. There was simply no way I could do this in a studio using professional sound people--a budget consisting of what you can scrape out of a govt. pension while putting three girls through college is pretty constraining. So I just did the best I could. I could (and will) argue that for the same reason the original had too-fast speech for authenticity could also be a reason for less-than-perfect studio quality recordings. There will be few occasions in your lives when you'll talk to people under these conditions--backgrond noise, indistinct speech is reality. (Okay, I'd still like to have done it better.) The original FSI had no illustrations, Platiquemos has about 500 in total. They are all authentic, usually historical, and provide a vehicle for some historical/cultural factoids as well as visual relief. FSI's Programmatic Spanish, in addition to being much less extensive and thorough than the Basic Course was also disliked by most of my Foreign Service Colleagues who used both--including me. It might be interesting for some of you to compare Platiquemos's website (www.platiquemos-letstalk.com) with Learning Like Crazy, Pimsleur, and some of the others. I recently received a note from someone who said the Platiquemos site isn't very sales oriented. Well, I do hope to make some sales, but I also want the Platiquemos site to be a resource in itself for learners. I've got jokes (with translations and explanations); music (with transcriptions and translations); and a bunch of readings, with translations for those who need them and notes about cultural references, etc. As far as the legitimacy of Platiquemos, I invite you to judge for yourselves after examining the site. I'm open to comments, both favorable and (gulp) negative, as long as you don't question my mother's marital status when I was born. Thanks to M. Micheloud for an excellent site--I'll be linking to it prominently even if it might cost me some sales ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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