zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 65 of 67 08 April 2012 at 1:41am | IP Logged |
So, I started FSI Cantonese.
Its basic promise is that it will take me where I want to go: conversational ability in Cantonese about topics from daily life.
It claims that learning the material up to Chapter 26 is all that is necessary to learn the basic grammar of the language. With approximately 1,000 vocabulary words and 26 chapters, I will have achieved my goal.
"By covering the first 26 lessons well, students will gain a firm structural control of the spoken language. We firmly feel that confident mastery of the first 26 lessons is preferable to hesitant control of the entire text, if a choice must be made between the two."
Pimsleur Cantonese gave me an interesting foundation. I got rid of any trepidation I may have had to listening and responding to Cantonese, but FSI is another level altogether.
I wonder how FSI Cantonese and Teach Yourself Cantonese differ? Any native speakers or advanced learners care to weigh in?
Edited by zhanglong on 08 April 2012 at 8:06am
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zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 66 of 67 08 April 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged |
FSI Cantonese is a little dense; the first chapter is 30 pages of vocabulary and seemingly endless drills. I'll try to keep it to two weeks per chapter. If I can maintain that pace, I'll be finished with the book in one year. ( 26 chapters x 2 )
I'll treat the book as merely a supplement to going through the audio files; I'm not trying to learn how to READ Yale romanization, but to understand Cantonese when it's spoken to me quickly.
Edited by zhanglong on 08 April 2012 at 7:37pm
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zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 67 of 67 09 April 2012 at 2:50pm | IP Logged |
To make things simpler, I'm folding this log into the "Chinese Odyssey" log, and just write one entry there, rather than have three separate logs.
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