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Review with FSI Basic Hungarian Course

  Tags: Hungarian | FSI
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41 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
liddytime
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
mainlymagyar.wordpre
Joined 5989 days ago

693 posts - 1328 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician
Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 41 of 41
30 July 2010 at 5:54pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
I actually stopped halfway through Unit 20, but who's counting?
Even before I had begun the review with FSI I had conversational ability in Hungarian. The value of doing FSI Hungarian Basic was to provide me with a lot of drilling on all sorts of aspects in Hungarian grammar.
Doing FSI Hungarian Basic on its own and as an introduction to the language probably won't help as much as expected with conversing with natives or watching a TV program with discussion on some complex topic. However you will likely acquire a nearly-native accent, learn how to read and write in Hungarian, get a solid understanding of grammar and absorb a substantial amount of vocabulary.
Doing the drills was a good way to assimilate grammatical concepts and get a certain feel for native word order but after some time I felt as if I had been on autopilot by the second half of an exercise. Doing drills and listening to the recorded dialogues only took me so far. I would suggest that you get exposure to Hungarian outside the course (e.g. hang out with Hungarians, watch Hungarian shows/movies (probably with subtitles at first), read simple Hungarian texts etc.) to reinforce what you learn from FSI and make things "come alive".
       If I had not studied Hungarian as haphazardly as I have done and done all of my Hungarian studies just with FSI, I would still have learned to read and write, develop a nearly-native accent when speaking, understand grammatical rules, and handle basic situations (e.g. ordering at a restaurant, dealing with the police about theft). However ability in more spontaneous conversation or grasping the dialogue in a Hungarian movie would have been a trickier aspect to improve since conversation can't be done well without a suitable partner while you need to build up an even more substantial stock of vocabulary to be prepared to watch a TV show for the first time. It'd be rather odd to have a "conversation" with the voices coming from FSI's audio in your audio player. I had to hang out with Hungarians and travel to Hungary a few times in order to gain more than survival-level conversational ability and improve noticeably my passive ability.



Thanks for the detailed response!

             Yeah, of all the FSI courses I have seen , FSI Hungarian looks like one of the better ones as far as drills and reinforcement of grammar~! The DLI course (thanks again Fat Tony!!!) also looks really good and seems to have more of an emphasis on conversation...although you also get the obligatory overabundance of "military vocabulary".

           - Wow, speaking with a near native accent sounds pretty good! that actually got me into some trouble with FSI Turkish. People thought I could speak MUCH better than I was actually able to!

           - Yes, I will probably need to find some people on the internet to chat with, because there aren't many Hungarian speakers in my neck of the woods.... Once I accumulate more vocab I will attempt to watch some Hungarian TV with subtitles and the like.

I know Hungarian isn't one of your "main" languages but if you have any other helpful study tips or links, please let me know!

köszönöm szepen!!!!


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