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FSI "Programmatic Spanish" vs "Basic" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 6983 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes  Studies: English* | Message 25 of 68 20 July 2005 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm really enjoying this course. It is way harder than I expected, and it requires a lot of daily work, but it takes you to fluency.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 26 of 68 06 August 2005 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to me there's a market opportunity for someone
to enhance Programmatic Spanish in a some ways like Platiquemos did with FSI Basic Spanish. The course already exists, so development costs would be reduced compared to coming up with a new course. The enhancements I'd like to see are: 1) Record a bit in the style of Michel Thomas. However, instead of having two beginning students, have a couple native speakers. The narrator should have a good English voice. In places where today, the student is dependant on the book, the text could be read aloud by the narrator. Responses, rather than written in the book would be performed by one of the native speakers. 2) Use a little inventiveness with the practices that are overly repetitive. A few could be modified into substitution drills for instance. 3) The application section (final portion) of each unit would also be recorded with translations where appropriate, questions, and dialogs. 4) Remove the numbers from oral exercises to keep the pace up. The course would no longer be setup for a student to ask a teacher "about number 5 in practice 3", since it would be a complete self study program. 5) Digital distribution. FSI also has programmatic courses in German, Italian, and Portuguese, which could be candidates for similar treatment. Then again, perhaps the U.S. government should update the courses with the changes above and distribute them via ftp. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 6983 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 27 of 68 06 August 2005 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Are there many of the replacement/ substitution drills in the Programmatic version? Or is it all divided up into practices? What's the variation section?
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 28 of 68 06 August 2005 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Compared to Basic Spanish, there are not many
replacement nor substitution drills. Contents of "variations" vary from unit to unit, but some common exercises: 1) Variation sentences (not recorded). 2) Sentences for comprehension (recorded, but not translated). 3) Response drills - recorded. 4) Written sentence correction. No answer given, but usually pretty easy nonetheless. 5) New vocabulary - recorded. Most of the variation sentences are not recorded. Most lessons have a comprehension section, which are recorded variations of sentences. They are not recorded for you to repeat though. They are a test to see if you understand. The variations are not translation drills as they are in Basic. In the comprehension section, I manipulate the audio to remove the number of the sentence and provide enough time to repeat the phrase. Units after 20 or so sometimes have a few paragraphs in which you are to figure out new vocabulary from the context of a recorded passage. Most of these words I already knew, so it wasn't always obvious to me which were the "new" words. These sections are fine as a comprehension exercise though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 6983 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 29 of 68 06 August 2005 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do you think the translation method is more effective though? Maybe people that only did Basic aren't able to create conversational sentences easily, relying on what they learned in the Replacement sections. Whereas the Programmatic learners have been translating for a while. I think I'm a better book learner but Basic has been working fine so I'm sticking with it, 1 lessons every 2 days. With Programmatic you can probably move faster, because of so little recorded portions which you can mindlessly repeat over and over. And then reviewing in the book takes very little time.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 30 of 68 06 August 2005 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps it's more effective for learning to translate. When I'm sitting in a meeting, I sometimes amuse myself by taking the minutes (unofficially) in Spanish. Also, in non-business meetings, I'll try to translate what the speaker is saying in my head. I don't know if it's specifically PS that's helping, or other things I do. For instance, Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish has a lot of translation exercises as well. I'm about 2/3 of the way through that book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7036 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 31 of 68 06 August 2005 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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FSI Basic German has a big, non-recorded translation section each lesson. It sounds like the Spanish version is quite a bit different. Edited by pentatonic on 06 August 2005 at 8:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 32 of 68 06 August 2005 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
The first half of Basic Spanish (BS), as available through Barrons is quite complete as far as recordings are concerned. In the "FSI French vs Barron's Mastering French" thread, Seth said Barrons left out some recordings that were available from the expensive vendors. I wonder if that's true for German as well, or if Basic German just didn't record some of the text. Programmatic Spanish didn't record some of the text. BS has some readings that were not recorded. BS has an extremely short recording of the "conversational stimulus". The conversational stimulus in BS may be only 2 minutes long, whereas Platiquemos turned the conversation stimulus into a complete 11-15 minute exercise. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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