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Any class based program based on FSI/DLI/ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5126 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 9 of 15 13 August 2010 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6955 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 15 13 August 2010 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
That's very true. It pays to keep an open mind as already mentioned and so do not equate name-recognition of a publisher/series and/or wide availability with high quality of the course. Teachers often have access to less well-known resources and can steer you away from materials whose value is affected by being mass-marketed and meant for people who are looking for too many shortcuts in language-learning. Although I would go with DLI or FSI out of the names/series listed in the original post, I've found excellent if not better materials for certain languages that escape the attention of big names in publishing or FSI/DLI's available material. For example, even though I think that FSI Conversational Finnish is a fairly good course, my top recommendation to people who want to learn Finnish independently using textbooks with audio is for them to use M-H Aaltio's course "Finnish for Foreigners" which is published by a Finnish company called Otava. On a related note, there may not be any self-contained course/kit/textbook published by some of the "big" names for certain languages. For example, I've yet to see any introductory course for Slovak published by Pimsleur, MT, Assimil, DLI or FSI. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| instasaint Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5018 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English | Message 11 of 15 13 August 2010 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with all of you about keeping an open mind and not relying on a particular name. However, most language schools I've surveyed (near by where I live) have a very old school approach to teaching language. There is a grammar book, words are divided into several rows in a table, there is reading/writing, homework. So, I am looking for a school that has teaching methodology modeled after MT/FSI/DLI. This is, at-least, a proven methodology. Having read all this information about these methodologies, I am convinced this suits my learning-style. I mean, a lot of people have taken language-classes in school for several years and can still hardly construct meaningful sentences.
After a while, once I am at intermediate level, I can always move on and try different methodologies and so on for further learning. It is more important to find a school that uses proven methodologies instead of old-school approach in which (knowing myself) I am more likely to quickly lose interest. This will simply kill my desire to learn. Edited by instasaint on 13 August 2010 at 5:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5810 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 12 of 15 13 August 2010 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
The courses aren't produced by MT's company, but by a UK publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, under license. I don't know whether MT's owen company does anything now other than receive the licensing costs. I'm assuming the site is a fossil -- it specifically sells classes with Thomas himself, which is now impossible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6256 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 13 of 15 13 August 2010 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
This is long, feel free to skip the bits that bore you. I've felt your pain, friend. But my guess would be, that you are not likely to find one such school as you search for. You should either try using these books with a tutor, as suggested before, or just go for a GOOD (relatively speaking) language school. Many members on this forum have learnt languages by themselves. I haven't. I need a teacher, a test, a homework, a pressure to learn. I counted the number of languages that I have at some points learnt in a classroom environment. That would be nine, my mother tongue not included. Languages of various difficulty, some indoeuropean, some not, learnt in school, university, language courses or with a tutor. Some just the beginning phases, some up to a relatively advanced level. Seen many different teachers. And my conclusion is, as I said in my previous post, that it all depends on a teacher. Say, German. Learnt some in school (skipped most of the classes). Learnt some in Goethe institute (good teacher, very recent textbook, interactive approach, games involved, everyone forced to speak). Learnt some from a private tutor, a very old gentleman who spoke, like, 7 languages and used a textbook published in 1942. I don't know how he did it, but he was great, though the approach he used was just letting me translate sentences and phrases from my language to German. Sounds primitive, but the way he did it actually worked. Say, Chinese. A long list there, had at least 13 different teachers and roughly the same number of different textbooks, learnt it in three different countries. Some good experience, some bad, some average. Yeah, I have a favourite textbook, but the classroom experience and usefullness really depended on the TEACHER and teacher alone. He/she is who determines the methods used. No matter what the school claims to do, the person actually doing it is the teacher. Again, it may vary, but the safest bet probably would be finding a big name language school. For German these would be the Goethe institutes, for Spanish there seems to be one named after Cervantes, there is some kind of French thing going on as well, China is now sponsoring the so-called Confucius centres abroad. For less popular languages, try some evening or weekend classes run by a university. There, look for the teacher everyone likes. Someone popular and cool. He or she is your safest bet. You could, of course, go for a tutor. Though there the question is - how will you find a really good one? A tutor with a wonderful personality will not necessarily be a good teacher and vice versa. Yes, in this scenario you can suggest and use which ever method you want, but well, at least one of you two have to know what exactly to do. Since you're just starting you will not necessarily know how to evaluate the teaching process. You might expect too much or too little. Good luck with your search, and let us know how it ended. Edited by aru-aru on 13 August 2010 at 3:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5364 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 14 of 15 17 August 2010 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think very few professional language learning schools are going to exclusively teach using the Audiolingual/DLI/FSI method, for the reason that its behaviourist/pavlovian theoretical underpinnings were totally discredited in academic linguistics circles in the 1960s and early 1970s. I make no comment on academic fashion, as most of the users of this forum seem to prefer the FSI style method to the communicative language method given the seal of approval by mainstream linguistics academics today (i.e., the CL method underpins the CEFR categories), but the reality is a professional language school is going to follow the output of University studies rather than (from the point of view of academic linguistics and psychology) an intellectually bygone method.
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5950 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 15 of 15 18 August 2010 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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While I love the FSI style courses for self learning, I don't think they'd work well in a classroom setting. The problem would be one of motivation for both teachers and pupils. The drills are rigourous but monotonous, and the lack of variety could be discouraging. The best method for a classroom setting would be MT, but this would require small classrooms. The method is highly engaging and motivating, and I don't know why it's not used more often. I know a French teacher that plays his tapes in her class, and the pupils love it. She pauses before the students on the tape respond, and picks somebody from the class to answer.
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