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If FSI is Audio-Lingual...... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5570 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 9 of 29 19 August 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Cainntear, "Everyone agrees FSI is boring, so FSI cannot be good."
I should have been more careful with my words here, my fault. What I was trying to say, and should have said, was that FSI is very boring IF YOU DON'T BRING YOUR OWN MOTIVATION TO THE TABLE, if you REALLY want to learn the language you will not find it boring, but if you don't they will not raise a finger to help you. Even so I like to split each lesson into 3 because if I try to do a full 1hour+ lesson in one shot my mind goes into "mindless zombie mode" after about 20 minutes. Now, unlike most of the people in this Forum I actually agree with you that MT is the best method, but there are several problems here: 1) As I keep saying (with some bitterness) he did not finish the damn things and nobody at Hodder seems to have a clue how to do it, I would say he was another 5 hour course away from finishing the grammar. For instance you will not learn the German noun cases in MT (even though his method is very suitable to teaching them as I proved in a thread in the now-defunct MT Forum), which will not affect comprehension, but WILL leave your German very very ugly. 2) He relies on YOU speaking with natives to flesh out the structure with vocabulary and idioms etc, which was difficult enough for me in Spain, since returning to the UK 18 months ago I have been able to get (I think) 5 or 6 SHORT (<5 minutes) conversations in Spanish. My comprehension gets better all the time (through reading and watching native materials) but my speaking and writing has barely improved. This leaves people like me with no choice but to pursue other methods, now FSI requires YOU to generate the excitement, that is a negative, no doubt, but for the reasons given on other threads it is the best overall program IMO. I also agree with Andy E about your criticisms depending on the drills in question, I think your points are spot on for the drills in the Programatic Course, but unfair for the Basic Course, why not try it and see? You say you want to learn the Rioplatense dialect of Spanish? Have you mastered the "voseo" yet? If not why not try the drills on that (google "loquella")? YOU SAID "Drills rely on repeating a pattern. This is to teach you the pattern and give you the opportunity to practice it, but in reality, you aren't practicing the pattern at all. What you are really practicing is the vocabulary you are substituting into the pattern" This is what I am trying to explain, in their Basic Courses the designers were clearly aware of this danger and designed their drills (God alone knows how) to avoid it. INITIALLY you are indeed only practicing what you claim but after a few goes (for me 3-5) something clicks and you "get it" and FROM THAT POINT ON you are practicing the point in question Edited by Random review on 19 August 2010 at 11:18pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5798 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 29 19 August 2010 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm afraid I don't have the time to work through the course, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to fully experience it as I'm beyond that level. So I can't say you're wrong, but a word of caution: Something clicked and you got it -- that doesn't mean other people will. Some people can connect with material while others will resort to memorising and mechanically churning through. Some people simply don't know how to approach the material the way you did. I saw the same thing in high school -- I managed to take meaning from the meaningless stuff we did in French class, others didn't. It wasn't that they weren't willing, it was that they didn't know how to and the course didn't show them how to. If you had to repeat tasks 3-5 times I'd say it was you learning rather than the course teaching. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5668 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 29 20 August 2010 at 2:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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FSI Basic isn't just drills. There's a lot more to it than that.
Just like Random Review, I remember the feeling of awe as I recognized that the course had me thinking in Spanish, that it was designed in such a way that it was forcing me to really pay attention, and in Spanish. There are portions of the drilling that are sheer genius, the way things bounce around and the different roles that the course puts you in is very smart. I made comments here and in another forum as I did the course at how I was continually impressed with how the course was done and what it demanded. So for me, it wasn't a case of "this is boring". It was more a feeling of excitement as I knew that I was learning so much more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5570 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 12 of 29 20 August 2010 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree entirely. The thing is they will not (unlike some other courses e.g. Pimsleur) HELP you to keep your attention focused, they consider that YOUR job, what they WILL do is design them so that as soon as your attention wanders you will start getting them wrong and thus allow you to realise as soon as it goes. This is something I haven't seen anywhere else (and, sorry to go on about it, even in some FSI courses such as the Spanish Programatic Course), you simply cannot get them correct in a mindless fashion. @ Cainntear this is one of the few things they have in common with MT btw (although obviously he doesn't use drills). I don't want to appear as though I'm bashing the Programatic Courses btw, I find their drills average but the way they break the language up into building blocks is exemplary 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5352 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 13 of 29 20 August 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not sure I accept the points above if we are talking about FSI as it was conceived and done in the 60s. As I have said above, in my opinion FSI is a fundamentally audiolingual and drill based course in its philosophy - the FSI students spent 6 months with 6 hours a day in the class room plus at least two hours home work to get through the 24 units in the French basic course. They were expected to overlearn until any drill pattern could be answered from any direction - that's stimulus and response training however you look at it.
The French Basic course therefore took students 1460 hours to get through 24 relatively small units. People complain about Pimsleur (another course based on largely discredited 1960s science) being a poor use of time, but doing FSI for 6 months 8 hours a day to learn the relatively limited amount that French Basic teaches you inside and out so that you can respond like a Pavlovian dog is a monumental waste of time - and it is not, according to lots and lots of research conducted since the 60s, how humans actually learn to acquire second languages. Of course, the behaviourist torture chamber philosophy underlying FSI does not invalidate FSI as a self learning course and I am sure that NO ONE here actually does it the way FSI suggest. In fact, its a better course for not doing it that way. The Phonology course is great if gone through one or twice and the Basic Course massively reinforces methods like Michel Thomas, Assimil and Living Language Ultimate as well as standing as a useful base course in itself. I do not want to criticise FSI harshly because I feel it is a great course when used as part of a rounded self study programme (especially as it is free) , however, when we talk about FSI as a method not being just about drills - that is how we use it now - but it wasn't the case when the poor diplomats were hustled into a classroom in the 1960s. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| johndem Newbie Joined 5003 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Studies: English | Message 14 of 29 20 August 2010 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you all for your input. This is a great forum!
Elexi, how much time do you suggest one spends on a FSI, or better yet Platiquemos Unit? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5570 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 15 of 29 21 August 2010 at 12:36am | IP Logged | |||||
There is an old martial arts story (perhaps apocryphal) that goes something like this:- A young man wanted to learn deja fu (with apologies to Terry Pratchett) and went to a revered master to ask to be taught. At first the master refused to teach him, but the young man was persistent, after a while the master started to attack the young man unexpectedly and with whatever came to hand, never actually seriously injuring the young man, but causing a fair bit of pain and discouragement. After a while the young man started to be able to read certain signs that he was about to be attacked and got out of the way, but then the master would change his behaviour a little and the young man would once again begin to be caught out. This cycle went on for several years until one day the young man just knew "in his bones" when an attack was possible, not just by the master himself, but by anyone, because his mind (like all human minds always questing for a good model of reality) had seen beyond all the patterns to reveal an understanding of the underlying dynamics of human aggression. Now, said the master, you are ready to learn deja fu. At their best the FSI drills are like that master. Stimulus-response? Yes, to begin with, but as understanding dawns they become so much more. I think that some people underestimate how clever these drills can be (I was once one of you!) because they have only ever been exposed to unimaginative drills churned out as a cheap way to claim that practice is being provided (be that at school or in any other kind of learning environment). These drills CAN ONLY be about learning responses parrot-style. This is what happens when you have a UK Education System designed to justify the jobs of a load of civil servants and teachers forced to teach students to pass exams rather than anything substantial (5 years of french at school, and I got a "2" [= B in England] and I can't speak French!), or publishing companies out to make as much money as possible from people who THINK they want to learn something but would rather watch the TV when it comes down to it. FSI is what happens when you have a department determined that something should happen (in this case that a load of motivated young professionals learn a language).
Of course we have made progress since the 60s, but we are a long way from understanding the learning process, this decade's science will be discredited in turn. What this means is that quality is still about the same thing as in the 60s: GOOD TEACHERS. As far as I am aware it is true that the FSI courses were written under the guidance of "Scientific Linguists", but I practically guarantee you that if we were to research the matter it would turn out that some very good teachers were also involved in the design of most of their courses. How many other courses is this true of (and no, to the people who write the blurb on the back of books having an M.Sc and X years of experience does not make you a good teacher, some of the best teachers are totally unsung)? Edited by Random review on 21 August 2010 at 2:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5352 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 16 of 29 21 August 2010 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't really want to get into an argument, as I have said that the FSI drills can be a useful part of augmenting language learning. I do not dispute that FSI is a very useful tool and, in fact, can bring rapid success to the self learner, especially when built upon by other methods. Nevertheless, your comparison with martial arts training is the theoretical underpinning of the audiolingual/army method and exactly the point that has been criticised in studies that have shown audiolingualism to be an inefficient form of language learning methods. Martial arts training trains so-called muscle memory - i.e. the synergy between brain and muscle fibre response that allows reaction speeds that are faster than the brain should be able to handle. This allows them to 'sense' and respond to an attack because they have trained for it so many times. I should add that typing practice does the same thing for a typist (save they can't sense oncoming fists but oncoming words).
However, the brain is not a muscle and second language acquisition is only partly based on automatic response (although I grant that automatic response has some place in language learning) - to be fluent, a learner needs to incorporate the second language in the deep structures of their brain - i.e. to be able to take grammatical and communicative rules and use the language creatively (even if that creativity leads to mistakes). I do not believe that FSI as taught in the 1960s (as opposed to being incorporated into a self study course) led to this creativity - I might be wrong as I don't know anyone who studied at FSI, but academic studies of the similar army method bear this out. I should say that when I taught myself French I used FSI along with the Living Language Ultimate series - I found the two worked nicely together. However, I certainly did not spend 1500 hours on the course but I did 30 minutes of FSI (including the phonology course) and 30 minutes of LL a day and went through both courses two times. I did this after completing the three Michel Thomas courses and the Oxford Take Off course. Afterwards I moved onto Assimil and Linguaphone and found them all the more useful for having done the previous studies. What I find useful from FSI is that the drills can overcome known mistakes and help reveal hidden ones - for example, I had terrible and inexplicable problems with French prepositions and FSI combined with the Practice Made Perfect book helped iron these difficulties out. So whilst I am critical of the idea behind FSI in its original state, I find it to be a useful resourse as part of my self teaching programme. And you are absolutely right about good teachers - the trouble is where can you be guaranteed to find one? Edited by Elexi on 21 August 2010 at 12:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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