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FSI *FAST* programs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| MichaelM204351 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5255 days ago 151 posts - 173 votes  Speaks: English*, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 7 10 April 2011 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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How far do the FAST courses take you? A friend of mine is wanting to learn Japanese and I was wondering if this
would be worth her time... She isn't a huge fan of the Assimil method and I saw that FSI only had FAST Japanese, but I wasn't familiar with the FAST series... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6967 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 7 11 April 2011 at 1:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Based on completing FSI Czech FAST, I would say high-beginner or low-intermediate competency. After completing the course I didn't deem myself to be fluent but I got reasonably comfortable with reading, writing, speaking and understanding basic stuff in Czech. Compared to TY Czech or Colloquial Czech, Czech FAST didn't go as deep with the grammar (e.g. nothing about locative plural or declining numerals). Yet I got a lot more practice than with TY or Colloquial as is usual with old FSI courses. A lot of stuff that I picked up from Czech FAST stuck for a while.
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| hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6044 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 7 11 April 2011 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The FAST course is a designed to covers the needed language for survival. It assumes you will be living in a city that uses the language. It is not a complete course. It is worth doing.
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| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6040 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 7 11 April 2011 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Agreed! The FAST courses were designed for diplomats on sudden, short-term assignments where "fast" competency was needed for basic daily activities like : ordering food in a restaurant, changing money, shopping etc. I would say they cover the same general themes as your "Teach Yourself" or "Living Language" introductory courses, but the FAST courses are much more vocabulary specific and efficient. You will not see an entire chapter dedicated to learning every world nationality and language in your target tongue like every friggin Teach Yourself course. ( big pet peeve! That drives me nuts. I really don't care how to say " I am Mongolian and I speak Mongolian" in Chapter 2 ! ) There is not a ton of grammar explanations, which is fine for the intention of these courses. I would say the FAST courses take you somewhere between a CEFR upper A2 and lower B1 level in fluency. I would consider them very good if you are planning a trip and want to speak to people about basic matters without having to thumb through a phasebook every other word. In addition, I think you can get most of them free on fsicourses.org ! Edited by liddytime on 11 April 2011 at 7:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 5 of 7 11 April 2011 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have done the FAST French - I found the dialogues to be nicely done and contain some nice features like Parisien accents (Like the famous 'schwee' for je suis). I used it as a backup to the Living Language Ultimate course and it worked very well in that regard.
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| MichaelM204351 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5255 days ago 151 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 6 of 7 16 April 2011 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks guys!
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| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4522 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 7 13 October 2012 at 4:11am | IP Logged | |||||
The FAST courses hosted on the FSI site are as follows: Czech French German Spanish Brazilian Portuguese Russian Italian Japanese Polish A few of them only have text, and no audio. As per the bolded written above, upper A2 or lower B1 is high praise for free courses. Does anyone have experience with non-Czech FAST courses? I'd be interested to know if the quality is pretty standard across the board. If so, I think they'd be a great way to "sample" a language before committing time and money to other resources. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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