How to use FSI?

[ilmari]

I have put together some instructions on how to use FSI Spanish Basic Course here:
http://www.dicendipublishing.com/how-to-use.html

I am currently developping an iBooks version of the course, so feel free to ask any questions you may have. I am quite familiar with the material.

[luke]

In the instructions to one of the simpler FSI/DLI courses, they recommended the following procedure.

1. Do the lesson with the book until you understand everything.
2. Do the lesson pausing the audio when it's your turn until you get everything right.
3. Do the lesson without pausing until you can get everything right within the time given.

Doing each drill this way would be faster than doing each unit this way.

That is helpful.

I'm focusing on the FSI Basic French course again. Started a spreadsheet so I can look back over time and perhaps notice which units or grammar points are the most challenging. The goal being to circle back and do the hardest drills again.

The approach I'm currently using involves audio tracks with "truncated silence". Audacity was very helpful for automating the truncation.

The dialogs, lexical drills (vocabulary), and grammar "learning/presentation" drills are the bones of the FSI French course. It seems getting those down will make the course more manageable. I.E, get a bird's eye overview first. After getting the dialog/lexical/learning drills down, come back through again with an eye towards tackling the "participation" and other drills. I used a similar approach with FSI Basic Spanish and it was helpful in maintaining forward progress. I.E., not getting bogged down in a difficult unit for too long.

I've started using the FSI book a lot more. That's been very helpful. I've also taken to writing some of the material out, which exercises a skill hasn't gotten much attention previously. Writing makes it feel like I'm studying, and when I'm studying, I seem to make more progress in less time.

[buylow12]

I always just read the textbook and did the exercises silently once and then would walk and do the audio. You always want to answer first and then repeat after them. If you can't answer before them, you need to work at it more. I also had the pdf of the textbook on my phone in case I needed to glance at it for some reason while doing the audio. When I first started I often had to do each tape twice or even three times, after about unit ten or fifteen I almost always just needed to do it once. I certainly wouldn't say I "mastered" each section like that but I felt repeating them was boring and inefficient at that point, it was "good enough".

Recently (I made it to unit 37) I felt like it was all taking too much time for what I was getting out of it as I had progressed so much. FSI was just a part of what I was doing and it was an excellent resource. Maybe at some point I'll go back and finish the course.

[William Camden]

In the instructions to one of the simpler FSI/DLI courses, they recommended the following procedure.

1. Do the lesson with the book until you understand everything.
2. Do the lesson pausing the audio when it's your turn until you get everything right.
3. Do the lesson without pausing until you can get everything right within the time given.

Doing each drill this way would be faster than doing each unit this way.

If you are a complete beginner, this will take you a long time. In the instructions FSI claims that it will take 10 hours to master a unit.

FSI breaks people, and it broke me eventually. I quite liked it for most of the time, but when I started trying to do lessons several times a day, it made me very tired.

10 hours to master a unit? Possibly. If you can hack it, and can find the time, you will make headway, but it does tire people out.

[Iuri]

I haven't actually finished the FSI that I attempted so far(German) because I stopped learning that language for the moment to concentrate on Japanese onlya, but from what I could get of it, I believe the best way to follow the FSI course is to repet any part that you didn't get right until you do so, I'm not taking here strictly about pronunciation but about grammar and sentence formation, on what concerns pronunciation use common sense, only advance if yours isn't too crappy. However, about grammar and sentence formation I would advise you to follow the advice of the course developers and only advance when you achieve perfection.