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Which FSI courses are good and which not? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| atropos Diglot Newbie Austria Joined 5553 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 13 19 April 2009 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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What I read so far, are FSI French and FSI Spanish good courses. What about the rest?
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| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6813 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 2 of 13 20 April 2009 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard that the Standard Chinese (Mandarin) course _would_ be fantastic if it used hanzi, but instead it only has Pinyin. Thus, that course cannot be used on its own as can some of the other FSI courses. You'd need to find another method of acquiring the written language. That means there will likely be a more obvious disconnect between what you can talk about (the contents of the FSI course) and what you can read/write (the contents of whatever writing course you end up choosing).
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5953 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 3 of 13 20 April 2009 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI Hungarian is fantastic. I'd regard it as one of the best Hungarian courses I've ever used. FSI Spanish is a good course, but I didn't like FSI French due to the audio quality. I wish they'd a Russian course with the same amount of audio as the others.
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| Tabula Rasa Newbie United States Joined 5522 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Greek | Message 4 of 13 20 April 2009 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm trying the Turkish that is available in the public domain, but the audio is too fuzzy to really be useful for
anything other than getting a general idea about how a sentence may sound. The written guide makes quite a nice textbook, however. My friends who have gone through full-time, real-life FSI courses end up somewhere between proficient and relatively fluent in 6-10 months, so I'm thinking FSI language learning in general must be pretty darn good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6886 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 13 22 April 2009 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Standard Chinese (Mandarin) is excellent.
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| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 5942 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 6 of 13 22 April 2009 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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They're generally excellent but, IIRC, the Thai, Lao and Khmer courses don't introduce
the script during the basic course - separate script courses are available though. (Korean and Hebrew courses do use script, not sure about Hindi) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5548 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 7 of 13 23 April 2009 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
I tried FSI Turkish with a website that provides live audio streaming and a PDF of the textbook. It was indeed very fuzzy, and you had to listen hard to understand the different consonants. I also found it was a bit vague, and that you might need a native speaker to help you out. I would prefer something more explanatory, and a little more informational. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6623 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 8 of 13 23 April 2009 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I have always heard that people make great results with FSI but I have never found an understandable description of how the course is really supposed to be used (a step by step, idiot proof guide).
Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful |
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