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How far will FSI French get me? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| CelticBasque Newbie United States Joined 4592 days ago 18 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, French | Message 1 of 7 21 June 2012 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am studying French over the summer
One of the programs I am using is FSI just wondering how effective it will be for me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6355 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 7 22 June 2012 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi CB, welcome to the Forum. 1. It's nice that you want to spend time this summer learning a language (assuming that it's not mandatory for you to learn French for whatever reason). 2. I'll bet that there are a lot of regulars here who are rolling their eyes or shaking their heads or laughing to themselves after reading your post because... 3. Nobody can tell you how effective FSI French will be for you, since they don't know anything about you, except that you speak English and studied Latin. 4. If you do the 24 Units of FSI French Basic (and maybe the FSI Intro To French Phonology first) on the free fsi-language-courses.org site (or elsewhere), you'll learn a helluva lot of French. 5. If you put in 1/2 hour of study a week, you won't learn squat about French over the summer. 6. If you study somewhere in between #4 and #5 above, you'll still learn a decent amount of French. 7. FSI French is recognized by knowledgeable language learners to be a very effective course. 8. The major complaints about the FSI Courses in general is that they can be very tedious and boring, and that they can be outdated, since they are often from the 1960s. 9. I personally did about 2 or 3 Units of French Basic, and liked it a lot, and didn't find it boring at all. I just kept repeating a Unit over and over and really liked the fact that I went from understanding zip, then getting a better understanding each repetition, right up to having all the drills mastered. (I didn't stop using it because I didn't like it, I just moved on to other courses and other languages, which is what I do). 10. I also didn't care if parts are considered out of date. (After doing German FSI Basic, I only found out from a post on this forum that "Fraulein" is no longer used) First of all, probably only 5 to 10% of things may be dated, but also, I think it would be amusing if I spoke to someone and sounded like people spoke 50 years ago. (Although I would not like to get slugged by a "Fraulein" who thought I was insulting her.) Good luck, and it would be really helpful if you post back in this thread at the end of the summer, how your experience with FSI French went. Edited by TerryW on 22 June 2012 at 6:30pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 3 of 7 23 June 2012 at 1:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Given what you wrote in another thread, I'd say use FSI to work on specific grammar points when needed. Better find an audio-based course to use as your main one.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 7 23 June 2012 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI French has been the backbone of my French studies for the past year - I'd highly
recommend it. It can be a bit of a slog, though - I'm only on chapter 15 out of 24, and it's been 12 months. I don't track hours, but my guess is I put in about ten to fifteen hours of work for each chapter. I work at it diligently for awhile, and then haphazardly, and then I put it away outright. It has an insane amount of drills, and they are effective at getting you to hear and internalize the language, but I think it would be exhausting to work your way through the course non-stop. My advice would be to mix it up with other courses that target different aspects of learning: Michel Thomas or Pimsleur for speaking, or Assimil for reading. If you want to do it by the book, FSI recommends that students 'over learn' each lesson. That would take some full-time dedication; I set myself a rough 80% threshold for moving on. edit: It might be a little dated, but then again, you never know when you might need to drop a line like Il est difficile d'obtenir une audience de la Reine. Edited by kanewai on 23 June 2012 at 3:24am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6149 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 7 25 June 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
The course is old, but I think it was written after 1789. :-) I'm also using the course, but it it is just one of many resources I'm using to learn the language. As others have advised, I'd mix it in with other courses. While the course is dated, that doesn't annoy me as much as courses written in the '80's or '90's, making references to minidisc and other slightly dated technologies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| suds Newbie Australia Joined 4488 days ago 1 posts - 3 votes | Message 6 of 7 05 September 2012 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I have only just started FSI, I have spent a month on the first chapter, but I have followed the advice and completely memorized the dialogue. And while i apprecite that some of it seems very formal, im finding that my prononciation and understanding has really improved from just one chapter. I am using it in combination with other methods.
However, Im an engineer. Im quite analytical and like structure. I was one of those wierd kids to who liked to practice scales on the piano (i still do!) For me FSI is almost like memorizing the formulae for learning the language. And the drills are awesome. Even if it uses old vocab, just get a book and find out what the newer terms are, most sound just like the English anyway. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Przemek Hexaglot Senior Member Poland multigato.blogspot.c Joined 6473 days ago 107 posts - 174 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, SpanishC2, Italian, Portuguese, French Studies: Turkish, Hindi, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 7 10 September 2012 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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IMO, French is one of the best courses made by FSI. It's not so boring as e.g. Swedish
which contains much more vocabulary connected with business and office work. In French course the dialogs deal with everyday situations. I love FSI courses because they have so many exercises to help you drill what you learn. And they are all (or nearly all) recorded so you can use them while commuting to work or on a threadmill in the gym (as I personally do). 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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