|
 |
Discount on FSI courses | ||
Tags: FSI | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Lizzy92 Tetraglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4243 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German | Message 1 of 8 17 April 2013 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
|
Hello everybody!
I recently came across the website where the FSI seems to sell its language courses - the ones that are recommended for self-teaching by this website. Does anybody know if this is the legitimate website to buy the digitally enhanced courses? I just had a momentary doubt as the site is a little scrappy. http://www.foreignserviceinstitute.com/ If it is the real site, then there's an exciting discount on! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 8 17 April 2013 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
|
I want to warn everyone not to use http://www.foreignserviceinstitute.com/. I bought FSI Basic Spanish from them many years ago before it was available online for free. They misprinted one of the course manuals and did absolutely nothing to correct the situation. Understand, I paid about $600 for the course. I'm so happy that FSI Courses are in the Public Domain because they were developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars and available completely legal for free.
Here is one site where the FSI Courses are available for free! Edited by luke on 17 April 2013 at 5:06pm 12 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lizzy92 Tetraglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4243 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German | Message 3 of 8 17 April 2013 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
|
Okay, thank you very much for the heads up, I was almost sure but couldn't fully tell.
Dangerous how they just bung the US State Department seals on their website. Terms and Conditions make it a little clearer. Anyway, thanks again! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| antibozo Newbie United States fsi.antibozo.net/ Joined 4240 days ago 9 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 4 of 8 20 April 2013 at 2:17am | IP Logged |
|
foreignserviceinstitute.com has no affiliation with the State Department. It is run by a fellow named Jay Reynolds, operating as Plurality Language. By his account, at some point in the past he acquired the tapes from NTIS (or whatever part of the government was selling them at the time) and digitized them, did a lot of work cleaning them up and remastering them, at his own considerable expense of time and money.
When fsi-language-courses.org went down back in February, i became aware of the foreignserviceinstitute.com site. Since then, every time i've checked, it's featured a banner indicating that, on the following day, the prices for all courses will be raised to $99 each. But actual prices are about $20 each and have remained so. $20 is not a terribly unreasonable price for a physical product, IMHO, but, as others have pointed out, there are other options. At the time fsi-language-courses.org went down, in fact, i had just started working with the FSI Swedish course, and, to support someone who seemed to be stewarding the FSI courses with some diligence and care, i purchased the Swedish (and got the French too, at a discount, after talking with Mr Reynolds on the phone). I could also have purchased versions from eBay or Amazon, in some cases for less, but this is what i chose to do. The audio quality on Reynolds's versions of these two courses was generally acceptable, with the exception of the second tape of the Swedish Guide to Pronunciation, which is very muffled. From what i've listened to on the two respective courses, i would judge the audio quality of the free versions as slightly better overall, altho the free version of Swedish does have some printthrough noise on it that is mildly annoying. I haven't auditioned everything in its entirety, however, so there may be defects in both versions i'm not yet aware of. I can't say anything about the quality of any of the other courses sold at foreignserviceinstitute.com, since i haven't heard them. I can say, however, that Mr Reynolds views the availability of the free versions as a potentially actionable threat to his business model. Since i started operating fsi.antibozo.net as an alternative source of the free FSI courses, i had a lengthy email conversation with Mr Reynolds, initiated by him, in which the threat of legal action against me was broached. I hope this was merely a case of frayed nerves, and that the restored availability of the free courses directly from fsi-language-courses.org makes it clear that my operating an alternate download site is not a real threat to independent sellers of the FSI material. What this does mean to me, however, is that the people running fsi-language-courses.org would do the community an additional service by fully documenting the provenance of the audio files. Metadata such as the physical form of the source material from which the files were digitized, along with the author of the capture process, could be documented in ID3 tags, and additionally as metadata kept along with these files (preferably using an industry standard profile such as Dublin Core). This would protect these audio files against frivolous litigation claiming that the audio files are derived not from public-domain source versions--such as tapes manufactured by the U.S. government--but from some other versions not in the public domain, such as Barron's or Mr Reynolds's CD-ROM versions. It is theoretically possible that people have inappropriately derived the free audio files from copyright-encumbered works, and, in the absence of any documentation as to who captured these data from what source, it is difficult to prove otherwise. Folks like me, who are trying to make these data available as a public service are placed at risk by this status quo. This is the reason for the appeal featured at the top of the FSI content i maintain at fsi.antibozo.net, requesting contact from the originators of the material. I'd like to facilitate the production of these metadata, not only to protect myself, but to protect free and open access to these invaluable educational materials. Please regard this as another appeal to the folks behind fsi-language-courses.org to either document how these files were produced, or work with me to get this done. Edited by antibozo on 20 April 2013 at 2:18am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 8 20 April 2013 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
|
I can say that I have heard the audio from foreignserviceinstitute.com for Basic Spanish parts 3 and 4 (of 4) because I bought it. It is muffled and mediocre compared to the audio for the same FSI courses from learnspanishlikecrazy.com, who include it as a free bonus for their original Pimsleur-like course. I also bought part 2 (of 4) of FSI Basic Spanish from foreignserviceinstitute.com and it is muddy in comparison to part 2 of FSI Basic Spanish from Barrons. Part 1 of FSI Basic Spanish is available from Barrons as well and the audio from Barrons is decent. I didn't buy the audio for part 1 of the course from foreignserviceinstitute.com because I had it from Barrons. It would have been an expensive waste of money to buy part 1 of FSI Basic Spanish from foreignserviceinstitute.com.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7220 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 6 of 8 20 April 2013 at 5:26am | IP Logged |
|
I remember Plurality Language used to sell other programs before in addition to FSI. Again this reminds me of the post in the thread about the vendors circling around like sharks. This includes the others like Multilingual Books and whoever else. They are all selling the same product. If you look at the Better Business Bureau website, Plurality Language has an alert about it and the phone number is listed as disconnected. I bought the FSI Portuguese 1 from Multilingual Books many years ago and they overcharged me $16. I asked about it and they did not offer to refund it on my credit card, but said if I buy another program from them, then they would discount $20. I asked to have the Teach Yourself Esperanto book, which was below $20 and the person said he would look into it. I tried to contact the company again and they did not respond. I have not bought anything from them since. The only vendor I had a great dealing with was Audio Forum, but the programs I bought from them were not FSI. Some forum members here is also aware, that there have been people who downloaded the free versions and tried to sell them on Ebay. The more people who know, that the programs can be obtained free and legally, then it will cut down on the others trying to profit from the FSI programs. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| antibozo Newbie United States fsi.antibozo.net/ Joined 4240 days ago 9 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 7 of 8 20 April 2013 at 11:43pm | IP Logged |
|
To be fair, the BBB alert about Plurality Language is merely that BBB thinks the company is no longer in business.
Also, i don't think it's fundamentally wrong for people to sell the free FSI courses, as long as they are not being misleading about it. Yes, most people can get them for free by downloading them, but it might be worth it for some people to pay for a copy on CD. And certainly someone like Reynolds is within his rights to sell a product he spent time and money producing, even if the source material is in the public domain. What i don't think he has the right to do is to try to prevent people from providing free access to the same public-domain source material. Regarding Multilingual Books: i hope you contested the charge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7220 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 8 of 8 21 April 2013 at 5:15am | IP Logged |
|
Unfortunately, at the time Multilingual Books stopped responding not just to me, but other individuals. Other members here even brought it up. Don Casteel the creator of Platiquemos even mentioned he might not deal with them in selling his product, as it had to do something with lack of communication if I remember right. Plurality Language used to sell Pimsleur before also, it looks like they stopped. By reading Luke's post he was a customer, who did not have a good experience with Plurality. BBB site does not have any complaint about the company on their website, but I take into consideration Luke's post. The language learning community is striving to make the FSI materials available for free, so as to benefit all, that are interested. I feel, as long as people are unaware, then vendors will try to take advantage of the situation. This is why I think the free and legal way is helping others in the power of knowledge. I highly doubt the people who downloaded for free and sold the programs were honest about it. I am in agreement with you antibozo to make sure everything is in the up and up. This way, the benefit to the language learning community continues. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
