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FSI Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Socrates Groupie United Kingdom Joined 7063 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes | Message 1 of 12 10 November 2005 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Just wondering if anyone has had any success using FSI Italian.
Is it as appalling as legend has it ? Edited by Socrates on 10 November 2005 at 8:41am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7106 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 2 of 12 10 November 2005 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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The "Programmatic" course (which is published by Barron's) is rubbish in my opinion. I would not recommend it at all. Just about the whole course is devoted to intonation and speech patterns. To make things worse, the script used isn't true Italian, they start making up symbols! I plan on selling my copy of it as I seriously doubt I'll ever use it. The other FSI courses by Barron's so far seem to be great, I think the Italian one is a lemon. Audioforum and Multilingualbooks offer different courses, just don't get the Programmatic one.
I usually don't say many bad things about language courses, as most of the time certain methods work better for certain people. FSI's original Italian course doesn't fit that category as I barely find any grammar or decent dialogues in it, so I don't see who could use it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 12 10 November 2005 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
At NTIS, I see Italian FAST, Programmatic, and headstart. Barrons, NTIS, and the others offer volume 1 of Programmatic Italian. Is there a volume 2? Are you familiar with Programmatic Spanish? (The dialogs in PSp are pretty dull, but I think the method is fine). I'm just wondering if P Italian is similar to PSp, or a real dud. Edited by luke on 22 July 2007 at 2:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7106 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 4 of 12 10 November 2005 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think they are the same, Programmatic Italian doesn't even start its units with dialogues and constantly drills you with question about pronunciation. I think I'll post a small .pdf of a few pages of the book so everyone sees what I'm talking about.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 12 10 November 2005 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||
I see one of the vendors is offering an FSI Italian phonology course too. FSI PSp incorporates the FSI phonology course. The phonology part of PSp, starts units 1-14 and 25-28 and focuses on pronunciation. The text and the audio for the phonology portion would be almost useless unless you had both pieces. The text is frequently something like, "listen to this sound pronounced right, then wrong", or "which one is correct, sound 1 or 2?" It makes me wonder if Programmatic Italian also incorporated the Italian phonology course. Does the intro say if there is a volume 2? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7106 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 6 of 12 10 November 2005 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's no level 2 that I know of. It seems mainly like a phonology course to me though.
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| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7106 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 7 of 12 11 November 2005 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can see a sample of the book here. I didn't know that google had these books online.
As you can see it has some weird way of spelling Italian and while there are some basic translation drills, intonation patterns are still being covered. Edited by Sir Nigel on 11 November 2005 at 4:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jtmc18 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7247 days ago 119 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 8 of 12 08 December 2005 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm currently using FSI Spanish and I'm learning a lot. Since I want to learn several languages, and I like this method, I've been looking at other FSI programs as well. The other day, however, I went to a local library and found the FSI Italian program- it doesn't resemble the Spanish program at all. I hope that the FSI programs for Portuguese and German are more like the Spanish one than the Italian one. I'm going to have to find some other method of learning Italian, because I do not think that FSI will be of any use. What other programs are people using for this?
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