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DLI vs. FSI Portuguese

  Tags: DLI | Portuguese | FSI
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
LatinoBoy84
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5577 days ago

443 posts - 603 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian

 
 Message 1 of 3
09 March 2012 at 4:49am | IP Logged 
Hi guys,

As some one who likes to follow up Assimil with drill based courses (French Basic, Modern
Russian, Turkish Basic etc) I was hoping to get some opinions on which was the better
Brazilian Portuguese course, DLI Basic or FSI Programmatic? I've really only ever used
the FSI Basic/Fast and DLI Headstart courses. I am not too familiar with DLI Basic or
FSI Programmatic. In the end I might end up doing both, but after three volumes of
Portuguese Assimil I thought it might be overkill.
1 person has voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5264 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 2 of 3
09 March 2012 at 1:12pm | IP Logged 
I tried the FSI Portuguese Basic and, I didn't like it as much as the DLI Portuguese. What I like about the DLI course is that it focuses on a conversation and a grammar point and then has perception, comprehension, pattern and substitution drills that thoroughly hammer that point home. At the end of each lesson is a page of new vocabulary.

The DLI Portuguese course hails from 1969 and 1970, so it does show its age a bit. I find the dated material to be quite cute and sweet mostly. There is little to no military specific vocabulary. I cleaned up the scanned PDF files by running OCR on the PDF files to straighten out the skewed images. I used the course on my tablet. The MP3 audio is very clean. It took me about an hour and ten minutes to work through a lesson. I enjoyed the course's repetition aspects and found it quite helpful.

DLI was a supplement to massive amounts of skype conversation, reading, watching films and listening. I just got back from a recent three week trip to Brazil where I put what I learned into practice and met new friends. DLI helped me to be able to move Portuguese into the "speaks" column.

Now I just need to keep it up and try to improve it even more, as I still do with Spanish, every day. Starting out in Portuguese, I thought "this will be so easy because, hey, I already have Spanish". Portuguese humbled me and showed me that I had to put effort into it and that, though similar, it is indeed a quite separate language, that's where DLI came in handy. It helped me to focus on the language in its own right.

Boa sorte, @LatinoBoy84!
3 persons have voted this message useful



LatinoBoy84
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5577 days ago

443 posts - 603 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian

 
 Message 3 of 3
10 March 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged 
Obrigado! I just started Portuguese about a month ago after 3 1/2 months of actively
starting Turkish, I feel comfortable enough in Russian now to focus more on the other
languages I've been studying on and off. Portuguese sounds so pleasant to the ear, and I
actually think Russian is helping my pronunciation.


1 person has voted this message useful



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