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Drill and Kill or Drill and Maim? | ||
Tags: Drill/exercise | Poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 8 24 January 2014 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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FSI is the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Diplomats have to learn how to speak the local language. The FSI created courses for dozens of languages to teach diplomats to speak. These courses are in the public domain, which means you can get them and share them legally for free. These courses have a lot of "drills" to practice and automate the language and grammar in the student.
Have you ever done FSI? How far did you get? What approach did you use? Here are two places to find FSI courses for free: http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/ http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php Edited by luke on 24 January 2014 at 10:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 8 24 January 2014 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you're going to use FSI, kill. You might as well burn it into your brain forever.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4361 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 8 24 January 2014 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just started with Turkish and Hebrew, despite the fact that it's not a self learning course. Precisely because of the drills.
Drill and kill - Learn them perfectly all the way. Effort goes a long way in this case. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4257 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 8 24 January 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I typically use FSI as a supplement to Assimil as a way to build up more automaticity with grammar. Currently I'm using it most intensely with Hungarian, and the Assimil course goes so much faster than the FSI, that the only way to keep up is to move on to the next FSI lesson once I'm fairly comfortable with the grammar. I recently finished going through part 1 of the basic course, and decided to go back and review all the lessons again from the beginning before moving on to part 2.
I found that there was a lot of lesson specific vocabulary that I didn't pick up, but also didn't deter my progress much in future lessons. All key vocabulary that re-appeared in multiple lessons I had a good command of, and I was much better at doing the drills than on my first pass through, though still not perfect. I plan on doing Part 2 of the course, then reviewing everything again and to gauge how difficult the drills in part 1 are after playing around with the higher up material. I think its best to think of the course as a tool and use it however best suits your needs. As a primary course Drill and Kill approach will certainly give you some serious active skills, if that's your goal. But using it as a supplement with another course I prefer to maximize the synergies between the courses by going through it in waves to get exposure to more content. Edited by YnEoS on 24 January 2014 at 11:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4055 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 8 25 January 2014 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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I support the "Drill and Kill" approach; the more, the better! By internalizing certain core patterns, some actions will become more-or-less automated thereby freeing the mind to deal with higher-level tasks when so challenged. This rote learning teaching method succeeds because it provides a solid level of skill upon which the student can build.
However, might I suggest that the FSI teaching method is similar to that adopted by many Karate schools and that it leads to the same level of proficiency, at least initially? That is, whether studying a language or Karate, the student practices predetermined patterns seemingly endlessly and, upon completion of the programme, should be reasonably-well prepared to acquit himself honourably were an opportunity to present itself. In stark contrast, Boxing is taught in a comparatively haphazard manner whereby the student is, for all practical purposes, thrown into a "full immersion" mode and must learn to survive. Sparring is obligatory from the very first lesson and, believe me, your opponents will NOT hold their punches. Who do you think would come out on top, pound-for-pound and punch-for-punch, someone who has taken three years of Karate lessons or someone who has taken three years of Boxing lessons? The same can be said for language courses versus full immersion. I am a HUGE fan of the FSI Basic courses; however, in my view, they work ONLY because they provide a good substitute to the full immersion approach in cases where the latter is not available. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 8 25 January 2014 at 7:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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In Finnish I would drill and kill, and love it. But even then FSI was too boring for me. I just did as many exercises as I could find, and then I would write my own sentences until I internalized the grammar.
Apart from Latin, the IE languages are too much of a mess for this lovely drilling. And heck even Esperanto wasn't as neat as I expected. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4361 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 8 25 January 2014 at 9:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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My biggest problem with FSI is the fact that it was built for a student/teacher approach. Take Hebrew for example. It says in the intro: don't bother with reading etc untill after unit 10. So, I look to unit 11 expecting to find something relevant. Nothing. No effort to teach reading/writing. And no niqqud in site for the entire course. So, this is probably something a teacher would cover in class, but I don't have that advantage. So I have to find a way around it. I suppose each FSI language has its own peculiarities. 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 8 of 8 25 January 2014 at 11:00am | IP Logged | |||||
That's true. What we have in the recorded courses is only a portion of the schooling an FSI student receives.
I suppose each FSI language has its own peculiarities.[/quote] The FSI courses I've looked at seem to have been created independently of one another. They are focused on speaking and pronunciation. It seems in some of them they didn't want the written language to interfere with the spoken language. Although Spanish is quite phonetic, FSI Basic Spanish, starts with a proprietary script to help the student realize the sounds of Spanish and English aren't the same, even though they mostly share the same script. FSI French starts with a phonology course to teach the student pronunciation and step by step how written French sounds. It has some written exercises. There's also the reading material, Le monde francophone. That reader doesn't come with audio. It's assumed by that time the student will know how written French sounds. What we have though with FSI courses is an important chunk of the curriculum. It's somewhat like a science class where you have a textbook and a laboratory pass. Edited by luke on 25 January 2014 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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