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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| cameroncrc Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6519 days ago 195 posts - 185 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Ukrainian | Message 1 of 6 28 April 2007 at 10:07am | IP Logged |
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I have been hearing great things about FSI [Spanish] for a long time now. Well, the other day I went to my bookstore, and looked at the FSI [Spanish] program. I was shocked. It looked like simple phrases and things that you could learn from any other course out there. Was this your first reaction? Is there more to it than meets the eye? I went along to buy another course (from Barron's, the same company) and it seems to have the same information, however with lots more visuals and interesting stories. (And it was $50 cheaper!) Edited by cameroncrc on 28 April 2007 at 10:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 6 28 April 2007 at 10:26am | IP Logged |
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If you wanted the FSI Programmatic Spanish course, you could download it for free at www.fsi-language-courses.com
It seems that a couple of volunteers are working on digitalizing the entire FSI Spanish Basic Course for the site, but it's slow going. One of the creators of FSI's Spanish Course, Don Casteel has updated the Basic Spanish course and renamed it as Platiquemos. From what I gather, it is an improvement over the old FSI course which was shamelessly copied by Barron's and recast as Barron's own course. Despite the cost of Platiquemos, some people here who are fans of cheap FSI courses think that Platiquemos is worth the cost. The beauty of FSI (and Barron's) course, is that it has lots of drills and shows a lot of grammatical explanations. That's all there is to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cameroncrc Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6519 days ago 195 posts - 185 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Ukrainian | Message 3 of 6 30 April 2007 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
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That's what I was confused about. Thanks!
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| Kleberson Diglot Senior Member Great Britain Joined 6420 days ago 166 posts - 168 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese Studies: Italian, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 4 of 6 04 May 2007 at 8:05am | IP Logged |
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When people talk about drills using courses such as FSI, what do they mean? Is it simply repeating set phrases over and over?
If this were the case, wouldn't it be easy to make such a course by oneself? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 6 04 May 2007 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
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FSI drills are either substitution, variation or transformation. Substitution means that you get a sentence but there's a word that's always underlined. The drill is to repeat almost the entire sentence on cue, but fill in the blank with the correct answer. Variation is similar to substitution, but this time your answer is a sentence that is similar to the example. On cue you have to translate a complete sentence given the example and the keyword. Transformation is a bit like a pattern drill. You get an example, and your answer is similar to the example but the difference is that it's either the opposite (e.g. negation) or in a different conjugation (example sentence is in present tense, answer is in conditional tense) It's easier said than done to make a similar course by yourself. If you were learning the language, how would you know what the correct answer would be? If you knew the language well enough to create such a course, you probably wouldn't be at the stage where you'd be relying on artificial drills to teach yourself. You'd more likely be exposing yourself to the target language by reading newspapers, novels, watching TV or movies or working on your conversational skills with native speakers. Another thing to remember is that the drills are oral. You get used to hearing and imitating native speakers which is preferable to hearing yourself parrot stuff in that foreign language but with no reference to native pronunciation. (important for all languages and imperative when dealing with languages with tones such as Vietnamese or Hausa or variable unmarked stress such as Bulgarian or Serbian/Croatian.) Edited by Chung on 04 May 2007 at 9:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kleberson Diglot Senior Member Great Britain Joined 6420 days ago 166 posts - 168 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese Studies: Italian, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 6 of 6 04 May 2007 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
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Hmm… It does seem more complicated than I previously anticipated. Thanks for the reply.
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