Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

FSI Mastering Spanish Level 1

  Tags: FSI | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
AH-64Dpilot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4618 days ago

4 posts - 4 votes
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 1 of 7
03 April 2012 at 11:43pm | IP Logged 
I have both this program and the Assimil Spanish with Ease. Which one is the better one
to start with? Secondly, I cannot find a lesson plan for either of them especially the
FSI one. Is there a certain rhyme or reason to which I should approach study? Lastly,
should I commit the vocabulary to memory prior to attempting the lesson? Thank you.
1 person has voted this message useful



James29
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5374 days ago

1265 posts - 2113 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 2 of 7
07 April 2012 at 2:39pm | IP Logged 
Welcome to the forum. I definitely (and strongly) recommend starting with Assimil (or some other similar semi-comprehensive course)... it will make FSI much more tolerable and effective. An Assimil/FSI combo is great... the two best courses for Spanish. There are numerous different ways to do each lesson... I recommend fiddling around (and reading some of the posts about the various ways to do each course) and figure out what works well for you.


3 persons have voted this message useful



AH-64Dpilot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4618 days ago

4 posts - 4 votes
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 3 of 7
08 April 2012 at 2:08am | IP Logged 
Thank you for the reply. I have already begun to do the Assimil first and I'm now on
Lesson 3ish. I am a false beginner I suppose since I took Spanish two years in High
School and then a year in college. I then went on to take 3 years of Italian in college
so I understand alot of the basic vocab, grammar, and conjugations. From what I have
gathered in the three lessons of Assimil so far is I am breaking off the dust for the
most part and getting back into the Spanish vocab as opposed to the Italian which some
things are extremely similiar.
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 4 of 7
08 April 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged 
I too would recommend starting with Assimil. The two wave approach to Assimil makes sense. If you have limited study time, I would focus on completing that course first before doing FSI.

As far as how to use FSI Basic Spanish, which is where Mastering Spanish level 1 comes from, I would start with the introduction in the book. The other parts of the course, as well as the books in pdf are available at http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Spanish%20B asic.

Basic Spanish doesn't introduce a lot of vocabulary. It focuses on the core of the language. I would memorize the vocabulary as it comes up. Some grammatical points are used (such as the preterite) before they are taught, but that isn't done very frequently.

Edited by luke on 08 April 2012 at 1:18pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



AH-64Dpilot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4618 days ago

4 posts - 4 votes
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 5 of 7
08 April 2012 at 3:01am | IP Logged 
Do you suggest I supplement Assimil with a vocabulary book? Just pure raw memorization
along with going through the lessons?
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 6 of 7
08 April 2012 at 4:06am | IP Logged 
I think there will be plenty of vocabulary between Assimil and FSI. However, if you have a great memory, stockpiling vocabulary may be useful.

Edited by luke on 08 April 2012 at 1:19pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Rout
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5711 days ago

326 posts - 417 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Spanish
Studies: Hindi

 
 Message 7 of 7
26 July 2012 at 12:35am | IP Logged 
luke wrote:
Basic Spanish doesn't introduce a lot of vocabulary. It focuses on the core of the language. I would memorize the vocabulary as it comes up.


Really? I counted 6485 words.

Level 1) 802
Level 2) 748
Level 3) 2153
Level 4) 2782

These are my own counts (took a long time to do using a calculator and a word processor when possible), so of course they're probably off by give-or-take a couple of dozen. Also, they include some proper nouns like Chevrolet and Nicaragua. 99% of the time they DON'T count conjugations as separate words (something I hate about Linqg), which, in my opinion, makes these numbers pretty legitimate. I say "99% of the time" because I think extremely common, highly irregular verbal conjugations were counted as separate words in the vocabulary sections (each conjugation of decir was counted as a separate word, for example). I only noticed this a few times though. It also includes collocations (tengo que), common idiomatic phrases (meter la pata), etc. I think these are all legitimate. This actually makes sense in a way; some words in Spanish do not have a one-to-one meaning in English, e.g. senior de la casa >> host (I'm not saying there doesn't exist a word for "host" in Spanish, this is just an example I thought of off the top of my head). Conversely, the same is true for English to Spanish (of course >> claro).

I got these numbers by counting the "Vocabulary" section at the back of each FSI booklet. I think this includes vocabulary from the reading sections as well. The vocabulary from one booklet does not list vocabulary from any of the previous booklets (at least that I could find). Overall, I'd say that 6000 words would be a good, if not an overly conservative estimate of the vocabulary count in Basic Spanish Levels 1-4. Even without the collocations (which are more important to idiomatic speech than single words are, IMO) there's still more vocabulary here than in Assimil. You could go through each word in the vocabulary and subtract out all the collocations, but you'll soon give that idea up - because they're are too many words!

- Rout

Edited by Rout on 26 July 2012 at 12:49am



3 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


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3911 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.