Digital FSI Programs Available from NTIS (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Digital FSI Programs Available from NTIS
Tags: FSI
Share with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon
Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

18 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Sir Nigel
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7104 days ago
1126 posts - 1102 votes

2 sounds

Message 17 of 18

14 January 2006 at 8:52pm | IP Logged

My CD of the Portuguese course arrived today. It's not copyrighted so I was able to post it on another topic. Basically it's a CD with mp3/PDFs and also a rather useless navigation .html file for use in a web browser. The files are fair as they are 24kbps mono mp3 files. I'm unsure if the audio has been cleaned up, but there's almost no background fuzz. The PDFs are just raw photocopies of the books with no OCR for searching the words.

I think they could have upped the bit-rate of the audio as all the files together totalled 400mb, so perhaps 40kbps would have been a better bit-rate. All audio files are split for easy accessing of the exercises.

Malcolm wrote:

Will NTIS start doing this will all their FSI courses? I was going to order some materials from them, but I'm a little reluctant now if they're going to have them available on CDs in mp3 format eventually.

I'm unsure also, however I wouldn't wait around for the to convert the courses. Although the price for the CD version is much cheaper, quite frankly, the digitisation job was only fair. I think they could have used some extra software tool to align the text lines (it looks like each scanned page is crooked).

Edited by Sir Nigel on 14 January 2006 at 8:56pm
1 person has voted this message useful

jeno111
Newbie
Canada
Joined 6724 days ago
27 posts - 26 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hungarian

Message 18 of 18

29 June 2006 at 9:37pm | IP Logged

Malcolm wrote:

It appears that they also have FSI Hungarian I-III (I didn't even know there was a third level) on 1 CD for $60.

http://www.ntis.gov/search/product.asp?ABBR=AVA21337CDRM&sta rDB=GRAHIST

According to a user, Linas, on http://fsi-language-courses.com/ the new version is different.

http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=25 &PN=1

Linas wrote:

I have ordered and got this Basic Hungarian course, and as it turned out, it is a completely new course issued in 2003, not the old course from 1960-ies. The course consists of 20 units, a unit consists of 2-3 sample dialogs(longer than in traditional FSI courses), a narrative(all dialogs and narratives are recorded) and exercises(many of the exercises are recorded although not all). Each unit is devoted to some practical topic, etc. buying, travel, at a doctor and so on. The exercises are of types "answer the questions", "translate the following sentences", "fill the missing words" , "make sentences following an example", "transform the sentences according to the model", "making meaningful sentences from the words in the table" and grammatical exercises. On the end of a unit there is one or more "understanding" dialogs, also with several exercises.

For those exercises which are recorded, answers are contained in recordings, there is a question, a pause and then answer, however for those exercises which only are in .pdf there is no answer key. The transcripts of "understanding" dialogs are given in a separate .pdf files.

There is little if any exercises of traditional "drill" type found in old FSI courses. In general, the new FSI Hungarian Basic course resembles more Routledge Colloquial or Teach yourself courses than traditional FSI courses, only that it has more recorded dialogs and exercises.

I am learning hungarian and it is very hard.

Edited by jeno111 on 29 June 2006 at 11:04pm
1 person has voted this message useful

This discussion contains 18 messages over 3 pages: << Prev 1 2 3

If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register

Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum

This page was generated in 0.3125 seconds.