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Platiquemos versus Barrons FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 51 07 April 2005 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Barrons Mastering Spanish Levels 1 and 2 are largely taken from the original FSI Basic Spanish Course. Barrons recorded some additional cultural information geared primary for travelers. Other than that, I believe the course is copied from FSI. The first edition book appears to be a photo-copied and slightly miniturized. The second edition (only available for level 1) no longer seems to be a photocopy. Barrons Level 1 is available in CD or tape. The text in the book that accompanies level 1 is more readable than the text in level 2. Level 2 has very small type and it's sometimes not crisp, as if it is a photocopy. A lot of the text is in a phonetic script. For instance, the dictionary is ordered phonetically, rather than in alphabetic order. Hence, words starting with 'b' and 'v' are in the same section of the dictionary. I didn't find the phonetic alphabet all that helpful. At times, I wanted the actual Spanish text and all the book had was phonetic script. The original FSI course, and hence Barrons had speakers that talked at the normal rate, which is very fast, compared to most learning materials. Barron's only offers the first 2 levels of the 4 level Basic Course. For the other 2 levels, one has to go to audioforum or one of the other FSI vendors. Or you could get levels 5-8 of Platiquemos, which covers the same material as levels 3 and 4 of the original Basic Course. Platiquemos has re-typeset the books that accompany the Basic Course. The books accompanying Platiquemos are better in some ways than those in the original FSI course. The Platiquemos books include a lot of historical and cultural information. There are a lot of typographical errors though. Platiquemos includes about nine traditional songs in Spanish. There is a transcript of the songs. I haven't found songs to be all that helpful for learning Spanish, however, they have given me some valueable cultural appreciation. They are also a nice break when I'm at work and think I should be listening to Spanish, but am too stressed to concentrate on a dialog. There is another thread that discusses Platiquemos in detail. For the purpose of comparing Platiquemos and FSI, I'll just note some additional differences. Neither course has extremely high quality audio. Few courses do. Living Language and Pimsleur have great audio, but those courses come no where near Platiquemos or FSI in terms of completeness. That said, the Barrons audio is more even. They have 2 primary speakers, and about 5 different speakers in total. They always speak fast, which took me some getting used to, but I think it's better in general. The pace and audio level is consistent. Platiquemos on the other hand has 17 speakers, about 5 of them are from the original FSI course. The audio copied from the original FSI has fast speakers, the new speakers generally speak slower. There is one speaker in the monologues who has an authentic sound, fast and he doesn't articulate words as carefully as a professional speaker. I think Platiquemos actually slowed down the audio on some of the new and old recordings on purpose. Personally, I like the original FSI recordings better because of their consistency. I like to "shadow" the audio (speak at the same time), and shadowing is much harder when the speakers talk at different rates. Platiquemos is an excellent value though. The download edition is about $200, which may sound expensive at first, but compared to $200+ dollars for a Pimsleur or FSI level 3 or 4 course from audioforum, it's cheap. Platiquemos modernizes some of the dialogs, making them more politically correct, etc. The original FSI had a scene where the new man in town is looking to ditch "la gordita" (the fat chick) at a party when he sees a hot brunette dancing. The protagonist in Platiquemos is a female and she doesn't try to ditch her date. The Platiquemos website offers lessons 1 and 3 for free download. Check them out if you're curious. There is a big section on pronunciation. If you are comfortable ramping your mouth up to the pace of the long words and phrases, you may prefer to start with Barrons FSI for the first 2 levels. If you listen and repeat the pronunciation exercises several times and are still frustrated at the pace, Platiquemos will be more comfortable. The pronunciation section of lesson 1 is lifted straight from the FSI recordings. The creator of Platiquemos has a sense of humor. It would be nice if he put some effort into making the dialogs and exercises funny. The FSI approach is tested and it works. The material accompanying Platiquemos says it thinks you'll spend 6-8 hours per level. There are 55 levels. Each level is about 50 minutes long. I found listening to each level twice per day allowed me to complete one level per week, so I was spending about 10-12 hours per level, listening in the car and while walking the dog. That's important if you have previous experience with Pimsleur, where listening to a lesson twice was probably sufficient if you studied every day. The FSI approach is much more intense, much more challenging. If your goal is fluency, Platiquemos or FSI aren't easy roads, but they take you there. Edited by luke on 08 January 2006 at 2:38pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 51 07 April 2005 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow! Thanks for such an excellent comparison. I agree that 6-8 hours per lesson is not enough. I also do each lesson for about 10-12 hours. Interestingly, I also do them while I'm driving and walking the dogs. :)
I was wondering. Do you think that Don Casteel, the creator of Platiquemos, is one of the voices on Platiquemos? There is one English voice that sounds conspicuously like one of the Spanish voices. I spoke to Mr. Casteel on the telephone when I bought the course, but I can't remember exactly how his voice sounded. I think I might be a little disappointed to find out that not all of the Spanish voices were native. 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 3 of 51 07 April 2005 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I suspect the narrator and Consul Harris are Don Casteel. It seems I read somewhere on the platiquemos website that one non-native was part of the variety :) Edited by luke on 08 January 2006 at 2:38pm 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 51 07 April 2005 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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oh. I missed that.
I guess it's a feature, not a bug. :) 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 5 of 51 04 May 2005 at 5:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Toward the end of each unit there is a narrative
dialog. Platiquemos has recorded these and they are drills like one might do in a class. There are translation exercises for the context and the dialog. There is also a narrator who prompts the "players" on what to say. To me, these narratives are one of the more challenging parts of each unit. Barrons occasionally has the narrative dialog recorded, but never turns it into an exercise the way Platiquemos does. There are some simple sections that Platiquemos leaves out that Barrons includes. Several units talk about intonation patterns when asking questions. Questions when you expect an affirmative response, when you expect a negative response, when you are wanting information, when you are offering options, etc. These are usually quite easy, and listening to them a couple times is sufficient to get them down. I like having them in the lessons though, because they provide a break between some of the more difficult drills. In unit 20, there is a challenging drill using double clitics (se lo, nos los, I.E. ... it to him, ... them to us) that I don't see in the Platiquemos book. That particular exercise is good and I expect it to help my understanding of how to use double clitics because it's a contextual exercise. Units 16-30 in Barrons and Platiquemos have a reading exercise. Platiquemos provides an English translation, which is nice. Barrons doesn't have the translation. Having the translation may save a trip to the dictionary. Barrons stops at unit 30, so it's only the first 1/2 of the FSI Basic Spanish course. Platiquemos completes the Basic Course with unit 55. Starting in level 6 (Unit 37) Platiquemos doesn't provide translations for the readings. It does have vocabulary help on new words though. At least for unit 37, not having a translation doesn't look like a problem to me. Even though I'm only working on unit 20, I can understand the reading in Unit 37 fairly well. I suspect after I work through lessons 20-37, I won't feel much need to use a dictionary. Edited by luke on 04 May 2005 at 3:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7197 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 6 of 51 14 May 2005 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I am trying to decide what level I should start at. How much vocab do each of the levels cover?
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 51 14 May 2005 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
I've read you understand the grammar and have a decent vocabulary. If speaking with a good accent is important to you, you may want to start at the beginning. With your background, you'll progress rapidly. As for the size of the vocabulary, it depends on how you count words. The easy way for me to answer that is to count the pages in the vocabulary section in the book, and multiply that by the number of words per page. That gives about 1000 words per level. However, know that some of the vocabulary entries are phrases, and many of them are variations of a word (verb tenses), so to say 4000 words in the entire course would be an over-estimate. So for an advanced Spanish student, FSI Basic or Platiquemos is more of an investment in your speaking and listening comprehension, rather than vocabulary per se. By the way, for an advanced student like yourself, you would probably still get a lot out of Barrons level 1 and level 2, but perhaps not out of Programmatic Spanish volume 1 and 2. Edited by luke on 08 January 2006 at 2:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7197 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 8 of 51 14 May 2005 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the response, now I can look into this more.
At my level, do you think I could complete more than 1 lesson per day? ( the basic lessons, of course) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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