shaun.lewis Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6141 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 1 of 5 06 February 2008 at 5:20am | IP Logged |
Hi,
I have access to the Pimsleur French course through the library at College, and I notice the FSI I+II and phonetic
courses are available on the net.
I am planning on using these concurrently with the French in Action videos, but I was wondering, what is the
overlap with these courses?
I have heard that the FSI starts at a higher level then the Pimsleur, so should I start with FSI I with Pimsleur II and
then do FS II with PIII? Any other methods? In fact, is it worth doing this at all?
Thanks for your time,
Shaun.
Edited by shaun.lewis on 06 February 2008 at 11:27am
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 5 06 February 2008 at 11:33am | IP Logged |
Here's my take (based on what I have experienced from studying German with both methods).
Although you can start with either method from scratch, you will probably find Pimsleur a bit more user friendly in several ways - it doesn't teach too many things at a time, and it doesn't drill grammar ad nauseam.
FSI is quite the contrary. However, still just a few simple dialogues per unit, but a lot of drilling of patterns, prepositions, verbs.
FSI is more vocabulary and grammar "intense" than Pimsleur, but please have a go at both.
You should be able to do one Pimsleur lesson per day, but it could take but to a week for one FSI unit (consisting of several lessons/tapes). Maybe you can progress quicker than that, maybe you find it hard to keep up doing both. Try it for a couple of days at least!
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tmesis Senior Member Mayotte Joined 6650 days ago 154 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 3 of 5 06 February 2008 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
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Edited by tmesis on 17 February 2008 at 2:14pm
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BGreco Senior Member Joined 6395 days ago 211 posts - 222 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Spanish
| Message 4 of 5 06 February 2008 at 3:59pm | IP Logged |
I would skip both of those. FSI, while great, gets very dull. Do some pronunciation stuff (Phonology course?), get Michel Thomas to learn basic structure, and then I would jump right into FIA.
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Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6626 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 5 of 5 15 August 2008 at 8:59am | IP Logged |
You can skip Pimsleur if you want and use MT first. FIA is a great course that I would include too. But you can not skip FSI if you want to truely master the language as deeply as possible. This course does at least 2 things better than any other. It fosters automaticity of speach and trains your ear to hear the language as it is acatually spoken which is seldom perfectly enunciated. To skip FSI just because you think it might be dull would be ludicrous considering the substantial benefits you would be missing out on. Assimil is very good too.
Edited by Cage on 15 August 2008 at 9:01am
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