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E.I.L. Italian (FSI style basic course) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3851 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes  Studies: German | Message 1 of 27 10 December 2014 at 12:16am | IP Logged |
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FOLLOW-UP DISCUSSION THREAD
In October 2014, Eric Blair opened a discussion thread that became known as Italian "FSI Style" Courses / Audio Forum. I am opening this new discussion thread to report specifically on the “E.I.L. Italian” course than was mentioned at that time. E.I.L. Italian The E.I.L. Italian course was published in June 1969 by the organisation “Experiment in International Living”. The course is a BASIC introduction to the Italian language and it was designed for use either in the classroom or for independent study. The course content would likely take the student to the CEFR level A1+ or perhaps slightly higher. The course structure is quite reminiscent of the FSI-Style method and students who respond well to this teaching approach would find it most interesting. The U.S. Government Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) website hosts a PDF copy of the 217 page course manual. E.I.L. Italian Course Manual. The lesson units contain: a conversation/dialogue, oral drill materials based on the conversation, new vocabulary, pronunciation drills, extensive pattern drills on structural items, conversational drills, translation exercises, narratives for reading practice, a grammatical synopsis, and a lexical summary The AUDIO recordings are roughly 8 hours in length. Given that the audio was recorded on magnetic tape in 1969, I was rather pleasantly surprised by the sound quality on the CDs that I received. As might be expected, the transfer to the CDs was wholesale and no attempt was made to split the files into shorter tracks. This is common practice for courses of that era. I converted the CDs to MP3 files and am presently splitting them into smaller segments. Each lesson’s recordings open with the DIALOGUES, which are presented four times. In the first pass, the individual parts are spoken once so as to allow the student to familiarise himself with the content. In the second pass, the sentences are broken down into words, or short phrases, with pauses for repetition. The third pass presents additional opportunities to practice the dialogues for greater fluency. The final pass presents the dialogues at what is most likely conversational speed. The rest of the recordings are devoted to the ample pattern and substitution DRILLS. If you consult the PDF version of the course manual, you should readily recognise the “FSI-STYLE” nature of the drills. I noticed that some of the recorded drills were, very occasionally, slightly out-of-step with the text; however, the slight differences are of no particular consequence. The course was published in 1969 and revised in 1970 and I suspect that this explains the slight lack of synchronisation. PURCHASING THE AUDIO RECORDINGS I purchased the 9 audio CDs for 25 $US from “Experiment in International Living”. The people I contacted by Email were as follows: First, the website: The Experiment in International Living. Second, the contacts. The following people kindly assisted me in acquiring the audio files for this course: The Experiment in International Living Language and Culture Department Beatriz Fantini, Director Email: Beatriz.Fantini@WorldLearning.ORG SIT Graduate Institute A program of World Learning Sharon Brooks Program Coordinator Language and Culture Department Email: Sharon.Brooks@sit.edu Enjoy your studies! Edited by Speakeasy on 10 December 2014 at 3:31am 11 persons have voted this message useful | |
| MarcoDiAngelo Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 6246 days ago 208 posts - 345 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Thai, Polish | Message 2 of 27 27 December 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the info.
Is the audio only for Volume I, or have you acquired the CDs for the second volume as well? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3851 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 27 27 December 2014 at 1:11pm | IP Logged |
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The "short answer" is that I have the CDs for "Volume I" only.
The "long answer" would be that, in a lengthy series of Emails that lasted over two months, I repeatedly requested information concerning the existence of a second volume, "Volume II", as the title "Volume I" would seem to imply. I also requested information as to the availability of course material for other languages. I was dealing with two separate people who were constantly refering my request to one another. Despite the initial favourable reply to my query, neither one of them seemed interested in moving towards placing an order for the CDs. I never received a reply to my questions and I was rather surprised to receive the CDs in the mail. A quick question for you: would you happen to have a copy of the text for "Volume II" or know how I could acquire one? If I can get my hands on one, I will relaunch the query for the audio files. As a final matter, we are a talking here of an old, but rather well-designed language course, the text of which is freely available on the U.S. government's website ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) by permission of the authors, the E.I.L. (Experiment in International Living). My thoughts are that it is "possible" that E.I.L. might authorise the release of both the text and the audio to be hosted, for free, on a website such as the "FSI-Language-Courses.com" or the "JLU.wbtrain.com - /sumtotal/language/DLI basic courses/". However, before making such a request to E.I.L., I would like to know whether or not the administrators of the FSI or JLU/DLI websites would be willing to host this material. Would you know how to enter into communication with the administrators of these sites? Grazie mille! Edited by Speakeasy on 27 December 2014 at 2:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MarcoDiAngelo Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 6246 days ago 208 posts - 345 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Thai, Polish | Message 4 of 27 27 December 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
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I'm afraid the answer to both of your questions is "no". :( But I'm also very interested
in what will become of it all. Edited by MarcoDiAngelo on 27 December 2014 at 3:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3851 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 27 28 December 2014 at 4:14pm | IP Logged |
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I have completed splitting my copy of the E.I.L. Italian Course audio files into smaller segments. The only flaw in the material is the occasional lack of synchronisation between the audio and the text, which I suspect is a result of the two editions of the course. Nonetheless, the course is still quite good. As there doesn't seem to be any interest in having this material hosted on the FSI or DLI websites, I consider the matter closed.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neumanc Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4811 days ago 11 posts - 41 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 6 of 27 03 February 2015 at 9:42pm | IP Logged |
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Since nobody else does, I want to speak up for the E.I.L Italian course being made
available for public use. Although I am not actively studying Italian at the moment, I plan to do so in the medium term. I looked for months until the PDF became available on ERIC again. Now I read that there is still the audio. I e-mailed to both contacts mentioned by Speakeasy. I would be willing to pay for the material as Speakeasy has, but no one answered me, and I cannot find the audio anywhere else for sale. Since I am a big fan of the FSI drill method (and I am not the only one on this forum) and there is no other suitable audiolingual course for Italian available, I think we should discuss how this material can be made available for the public. You may have noticed that this is my very first post on this forum, although I am a member since almost four years now. I therefore deem it fair that I give you some information about me: I was born into a monolingual German environment. As many of you, I studied languages in high school (English, French, and Latin) - but to no avail. Although I did everything my teachers told me, I could not hold up a simple conversation in spite of the good grades I attained. So I lost interest and abadoned languages altogether until after my legal studies when, on a visit in Florence in late 2004, leafing through an Italian book I found in a used bookstore, I realized that many of the words were quite familiar to me due to having studied Latin in high school. This awakened my interest in language study, and I began immediately studying Italian on my own without any guidance how to do so. However, having found and used a simple listen-and-repeat-course ("Italienisch natuerlich und leicht lernen" by Karl-Dieter Buenting) I had much more success than in school - with only half the effort. In 2005, I got the chance of working with the German embassy in Rome, Italy, as part of my legal trainig. This meant I had to understand, assess, and evaluate Italian documents about complex legal and political affairs. This worked out very well, much better than anything I could have imagined in English at that time after eight years of schooling. Also, I got by speaking Italian during my stay, although this was by far my weakest ability. To my great regret, I had to abandon my Italian studies after that because I simply did not have the time. In 2006, also as part of my legal training, I worked with a law firm in Toronto, Ontario, so I directed all my efforts to learning English the same way (using the course "Englisch natuerlich und leicht lernen" by Karl-Dieter Buenting). After the German bar exam in early 2007, I started my legal career working as as lawyer for an international law firm. Regrettably, very long working hours ate up all my free time, even getting my teeth brushed was quite a challenge. So there was no time for language study, although I tried multiple times. In late 2013, I quit the job and became a professor of law. Last summer, having my lectures up and running, I returned to this forum, which I had encountered in 2011, and systematically read through nearly all of the posts. I must say I am deeply impressed by the wisdom and wealth of language abilities many seasonsed HTLAL-members have accumulated. I also found some very beneficial language learning strategies on this forum, which I immediatly put into practice with French, a language which I wanted to start over with for many years. At the moment, I am doing a multiple-track-attack with shadowing and scriptorium using Assimil French without Toil, translating other materials back and forth (Luca method), and - last but not least - drilling grammar with FSI French. Doing drills I find very important, because there is a very big difference between understanding the grammar rules of a language and applying them on the fly. I find the FSI method very beneficial for my French speaking abilities. Since I plan to restart learning Italian at some time in the future, I have already begun to research and gather some material for it. The courses that may be suitable for FSI- style drilling are the following: 1) FSI Italian Fast: PDFs and audio availably for free on the FSI language courses website, but very basic material. The drills are not sufficient in my view. 2) FSI Italian Programmed Course: Course and half of the audio available for free on the FSI language courses website, but terrible teaching approch (as everybody agrees on this forum). Not usable. 3) DLI Italian Basic Course: There must have been such a course, since some of the volumes are available on Amazon, but for a very high price. No audio support to be found. Unfortunately, not even the PDFs are available on the website of the Joint Language University. 4) Pimsleur Italian phases 1 to 4: Readily available for download but very expensive. Not quite the FSI drill method but rather translating back and forth. Too basic in my view (at least for the steep price). 5) Spoken modern Italian: Italian for a modern living by Robert A. Hall: I think that this course was intended to be used as FSI Italian Basic course. It has the same style and layout as other FSI basic courses. Publisher is Spoken Language Services. However, the book and the audio contain only the basic dialogs whereas the drills (which are very much alike the ones in FSI French) are only outlined in the annex of the book. It would be possible to type them out first and then record them. This is very much work which, above all, would require a deep understanding of Italian grammar. Not feasible for a learner in my opinion. 6) Modern spoken Italian Parts A and B by Elaine V. Baran: Books and accompanying audio available via Amazon, but too lightwheight to be beneficial, not worth the expense. 7) Linguaphone corso d'Italiano; Esercizi orali: The drills are only some minutes long and therefore useless. 8) Language Laboritory Pattern Drills in Italian by Gwen Landsdell: Very short book, hard to get, but contains FSI-style drills. Audio not available (any more?). Could be (re- )recorded. 9) L'Italiano al laboratorio linguistico by Angelo Chiuchiu: This book contains quite a few FSI-style drills. Regrettably, the audio (10 audio cassettes) is nowhere to be found. Could be re-recorded. 10) In Italiano: Grammatica Italiana per straneri; corso multimediale di lingua e civilta a livello elementare e avanzato by Angelo Chichiu: There are some passages in this book ("fissazione delle strutture") which could be recorded. 11) La lingua Italiana per straneri, corso elementare ed intermedio, volume unico by Katerin Katerinov. This course contains many grammar drills which could be recorded. 12) Post Language Program: Italian Course (FSI introductury course) : Available for download on ERIC, but audio no longer available. Could be re-recorded. This leaves, last but not least: 13) E.I.L. Italian: An Audio-Lingual Course. Volume I. By Alvino E. Fantini: Available for download on ERIC. I may point out: THIS IS THE ONLY REASONABLE THOROUGH AUDIOLINGUAL COURSE WITH READY-MADE AUDIO STILL AVAILABLE. In my opinion, this leaves us no other possibility as to discuss if there is any way to make the audio of the E.I.L. Italian course available for language learners who find FSI- style drills beneficial for their learning 13 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3851 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 7 of 27 05 February 2015 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
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Assuming that the holder of the rights to the E.I.L Italian course audio files would agree to their release, without charge, to the general public, I would be pleased to send a compressed mp3 file to anyone who can upload them to the DLI, FSI, or some similar website, for such a purpose. As a measure of SUPPORT for such a project, I suggest that forum members VOTE on NEUMANC’s comments above. Edited by Speakeasy on 06 February 2015 at 12:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3851 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 27 09 February 2015 at 10:18pm | IP Logged |
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As of today, February 9th, here is the tally since Neumanc posted his comment above:
Views of this discussion thread : 136 (started count at 635) Votes in support of Neumanc’s suggestion: 9 (including my vote) Comments from Moderators of this forum: 0 Comments from Administrators of the DLI/FSI websites: 0 Conclusion: You can’t push a rope. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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