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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7012 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 1 of 6 26 November 2006 at 3:11pm | IP Logged |
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or 'ERIC' - 'provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text.'
It definitely points to some FSI courses, eg Hindi, Twi. At the moment, I think it only has abstracts for these, but I didn't check every language. And many of the items currently do have full text, so in time, who knows, perhaps the full text for FSI courses will be provided there... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7005 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 6 26 November 2006 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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We discussed it before on the first version of gdfellows' "new" website.
The only thing related to an FSI course that is available in .pdf format is the text of the Basic Czech course. Even that is less than ideal. The FSI Czech text is really less useful than a comparable FSI text of a basic course of most of the other languages in the series. The FSI Czech Basic course is really designed for a classroom and about 2/3 of the exercises in each chapter are group exercises or rely on the teacher to point out things in the classroom or lead discussions with cues from pictures in the textbook. To boot, the introduction explicitly states that the tapes that are part of the course are unavailable to the public. Most of the other stuff (not just languages, but articles, books and journals) is just in abstracts. When you look deeper, documents that ERIC doesn't have can be viewed on microfiche at some libraries in the USA, but of course, it's not applicable for anyone outside the USA and it doesn't have a database showing which libraries even have the microfiches. It also mentions the possibility of ordering texts that are unavailable on ERIC from some companies for a fee. I currently don't see much value in ERIC since I checked it out for the first time a few months ago. As its homepage states: "ERIC provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text. ERIC is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES)." The keyword for me is "bibliographic records" (as opposed to full text which is what counts). 1.2 million sounds impressive, but it's a tease since most of its entries are just abstracts of 3 to 10 sentences. Who gives? Free access to a bunch of abstracts doesn't count for much if the full text is unavailable. Perhaps in the distant future the State Department will put all of its FSI language courses for free and post all of the texts on ERIC as .pdf files. However, I'm afraid that it won't happen until the languages change so much that the content in those old FSI courses becomes obsolete and useless when learning the future forms of those languages. In the meantime, I wouldn't bet the farm for the government to play Santa Claus and give its stuff away for free without strings attached. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6993 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 3 of 6 26 November 2006 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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The ERIC site does have some language "courses" (no audio) written for Peace Corps volunteers in various languages. If memory serves, these include Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Romanian, Russian, Mongolian, some African languages, and one or two Arabic dialects. amd probably others. These are not really complete courses, but "books" in PDF form with lessons usually arranged by topic, with some grammatical information provided as well. In addition, there are a number of volumes from the Pashto course produced a number of years ago by the Center for Applied Linguistics. There may be other languages represented as well.
The above comment is thus correct that most of the documents cited are of the "abstract" variety, but if one searches, there also are some other full documents that may be of use to language learners, especially for some of the lesser-studied languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7012 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 4 of 6 27 November 2006 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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If you use ERIC's advanced search page, you can elect to 'Show only results with free full-text directly from ERIC', which makes it a bit easier to find (potentially) useful stuff.
OK - no audio, and probably not up to FSI course standards, but if you're learning something exotic, this could save you buying something expensive (and quite possibly not as good) For starters, some stuff from the peace corps for: uzbek kazakh turkmen kyrgyz romanian - first steps romanian - our language is a treasure (includes 4 moldovan fairy tales!) russian mongolian mongolian - phrasebook swahili chinyanja shona luganda tagalog tagalog (through cartoons!) tagalog 'language packet' morrocan arabic tunisian arabic more morrocan arabic more tunisian arabic even more tunisian arabic Stuff from other sources: an english-hausa dictionary a non-formal swahili grammar pashto - a reference grammar central thai dictionary northern thai dictionary Isaan thai dictionary arabic - a reading course Advanced standard arabic indonesian readings indonesian short stories (about bali) binukid dictionary + grammar notes (spoken in Bukidnon province of the Philippines) for the ESL teachers out there: manual on english pronounciation for speakers of SE asian languages language and cultural minorities resource catalog key english vocabulary translated into 10 minority languages (Arabic, Bosnian, Cambodian, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Lao, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Somali, Vietnamese) Perhaps if anyone finds anything they think could be useful on ERIC, they could post a link here, mentioning the name of the language? Edited by onebir on 28 November 2006 at 6:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| breckes Triglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6648 days ago 84 posts - 89 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian Studies: Italian, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 6 27 November 2006 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
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Here is a list of the titles of the pdf files I have downloaded on ERIC a few months ago. I don't have the links, but you can search for the title on the site.
Albanian language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Albania Arabic 401 - A reading course Advanced Standard Arabic through authentic texts and audiovisual materials Moroccan Arabic textbook. Student edition. Moroccan Arabic: a competency based curriculum, beginning & intermediate students Tunisian Arabic A beginner's course in Tunisian Arabic Armenian language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia Peace Corps/Zambia PST 1995 special lessons: Bemba A discourse-oriented grammar of Eastern Bontoc Cebuano language packet Crioulo grammar made simple Czech grammar Czech basic course Czech for Americans. A beginning level competency-based course Reading authentic Czech, volume II - Authentic readings, proficiency-based methods Čeština pro Prokročilé (Intermediate Czech) L'esperanto et le plurilinguisme de l'avenir: entretien avec Umberto Eco Estonian language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in the Republic of Estonia Manuel de fulfulde Ann pale kreyol - an introductory course in Haitian Creole Ilokano language packet Ilonggo language packet Ivatan language packet Jiwele-Baxoje Wan'shige Ukenye Ich'e (Otoe-Iowa Indian language), books I and II A grammar sketch of the Kaki Ae language Manuel de kanuri Karankawa linguistic materials Kazakh (Qazaq-) grammatical sketch with affix list Kazakh: language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan Kazakh language course for Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan Kirghiz language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Kirghizstan Kyrgyz language manual Latvian language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in the Republic of Latvia Luganda self-instructing learner's manual Malagasy ofisialy Mongol language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Mongolia Peace Corps/Zambia PST 1995 special lessons. Nyanja Beginning Pashto textbook and workbook (revised edition) Intermediate Pashto textbook and workbook (revised edition) Pashto conversation manual and Pashto conversation tapescript A reference grammar of Pashto Pashto-English glossary for the CAL Pashto materials Sinhala language trainer's manual Reading authentic Polish, volume II PC Volunteers' first steps in Romanian Romanian grammar workbook for Peace Corps volunteers Limba Romana pre-service training language manual Practicum for reading and writing in Romanian Russian language course for peace corps trainees in Russia Russian language competencies for peace corps volunteers in Russia Russian language competencies for peace corps volunteers in Russia: workbook Teaching reading in Russian, volume 1 Teaching reading in Russian, volume 2 Russian supplementary dialogues Gagano Samoa Mo Pisikoa. Peace Corps Samoan language handbook Language manual II: Sesotho A sketch of Shabo grammar Shona language course. Books I, II & III A basic reference grammar of Slovene Sumerian: the descendent of a proto-historical creole ? Swahili learners' reference grammar Kiswahili book for Peace Corps Tanzania Kiswahili competency based manual. Revised Language correspondence course (community entry language preparation): Tagalog, modules 1-21 Tagalog language packet Tamazight: a competency-based curriculum, beginning & intermediate students Tashelheet: a competency-based curriculum, beginning & intermediate students A pedagogical grammar of Tboli Tokpisin grammar workbook for English speakers. A practical approach to learning the sentence structure of Melanesian Pidgin Turkmen language manual Turkmen language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Turkmenistan Ukrainian - language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Ukraine In days gone by: a reader. Ukrainian language development series. Uzbek - language competencies for Peace Corps volunteers in Uzbekistan Viracnon language packet 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7012 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 6 of 6 27 November 2006 at 7:17am | IP Logged |
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Wow! Half of those i'd never even heard of, or i'd have searched for them!
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