Has anyone completed FSI?

[Speakeasy]

As of this writing, there have been 42 ballots cast by the current 10,094 registered members. Reading the tea leaves on such a score opens the door to much speculation. Does this mean that only 0,42 % of the members are even aware of the existence of the FSI courses, or is this an expression of the wide-spread apathy that plagues the referendum process the results of which are often skewed by the lack of participation by the majority? I am beside myself with curiosity!

[Beli Tsar]

As of this writing, there have been 42 ballots cast by the current 10,094 registered members. Reading the tea leaves on such a score opens the door to much speculation. Does this mean that only 0,42 % of the members are even aware of the existence of the FSI courses, or is this an expression of the wide-spread apathy that plagues the referendum process the results of which are often skewed by the lack of participation by the majority? I am beside myself with curiosity!

Or do the questions leave those of us who could work with it but haven't yet, or are working with it but only just, no way to answer?

It's certainly not clear to me I'm qualified to answer the poll with my small, though positive, experience of FSI.

And that's probably fine. It's nice hearing from those who know what they are talking about.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I’m working with FSI French right now, and loving it. But! I’ve already have 200+ hours of French listening and can read at about B2. So for me the cognitive load of the drills is much lower. These are constructions I’m already familiar with. I’m using FSI to tweak my pronunciation and build my muscle memory. I’m not using it from scratch, which would be much more daunting. I think bringing knowledge of French to FSI makes it much less dry. Many more “aha” moments. (“So you do drop that <e>! I knew it!” and “why the heck don’t they pronounce that first syllable!?!”)

[reineke]

If the course feels like it's going to take you 2-3 years vote 2. and 4.

Nah.. I'll maintain my position with zenmonkey..

Tra il dire e il fare c'è di mezzo il mare.

Saying is one thing and doing is another.

[chove]

As of this writing, there have been 42 ballots cast by the current 10,094 registered members. Reading the tea leaves on such a score opens the door to much speculation. Does this mean that only 0,42 % of the members are even aware of the existence of the FSI courses, or is this an expression of the wide-spread apathy that plagues the referendum process the results of which are often skewed by the lack of participation by the majority? I am beside myself with curiosity!

I've heard of it, even downloaded a couple, but never used them.

[Speakeasy]

I've heard of it, even downloaded a couple, but never used them.

Given your present state of advancement in German and Spanish, I would say that you would not derive much benefit from working through the FSI German Basic and FSI Spanish Basic courses.

However, if you are interested in trying the “FSI experience” in your study of Polish, you might wish to know that the Foreign Service Institute was a co-sponsor of the audio-lingual method “Beginning Polish” course by Alexander Schenker for which the roughly 60 hours of audio recordings are freely-available via the Yale University website. Rather than develop their own Polish course, they simply adopted Alexander Schenker’s for the teaching of Polish at the FSI. A comparison of this course with, for example, FSI German Basic, leaves one with the impression that the author simply copied the FSI model and plugged in the Polish language (note: an impression only, the process was vastly more complicated than that). I warn you, though, “Beginning Polish” is not for the faint of heart!

If you complete it, or even attempt it, I am sure that Reineke will allow you to submit a ballot in his questionnaire.

[MacGyver]

I had a couple of cracks at the Korean course. I gave up both times at the first lesson.

The biggest issue for me was the heavy use of romanisation.

The language was a bit out of date, but workable. I might have another go at it in future....

[zenmonkey]

As of this writing, there have been 42 ballots cast by the current 10,094 registered members. Reading the tea leaves on such a score opens the door to much speculation. Does this mean that only 0,42 % of the members are even aware of the existence of the FSI courses, or is this an expression of the wide-spread apathy that plagues the referendum process the results of which are often skewed by the lack of participation by the majority? I am beside myself with curiosity!

First off, it means that the majority of people registered on the site are not active on the site.

[Speakeasy]

First off, it means that the majority of people registered on the site are not active on the site.

Yes, I am quite aware of that. Nonetheless, they chose to register, a matter which renders them eligible to vote. The phenomenon of “inactive registered voters” exists in all electoral systems (with some notable exceptions wherein those who administer the system report 100% voter turnout and 100% support for the options placed before the electorate).

So then, in designing your own electoral system, how would you calculate the rate of participation in this, or in any other poll/referendum/election? Na, on second thought, forget it, it would be just another derailment of a thread and, in any event, I do not think that many people appreciated the point that I was trying to make.

[zenmonkey]

First off, it means that the majority of people registered on the site are not active on the site.

Yes, I am quite aware of that. Nonetheless, they chose to register, a matter which renders them eligible to vote. The phenomenon of “inactive registered voters” exists in all electoral systems (with some notable exceptions wherein those who administer the system report 100% voter turnout and 100% support for the options placed before the electorate).

So then, in designing your own electoral system, how would you calculate the rate of participation in this, or in any other poll/referendum/election? Na, on second thought, forget it, it would be just another derailment of a thread and, in any event, I do not think that many people appreciated the point that I was trying to make.

I'll still answer, I think it is an interesting question.

If I wanted to evaluate a participation rate on this, I'd look at the unique visitors on the thread (from analytics) or just from the people posting in the thread. But given the number of people dissenting on the poll design - it's pretty much a wash.

In a real election, one makes the assumption that the majority of the public is aware of it. So engagement is really based on that assumption and total eligible people that have registered to vote. But the people that have registered on this site are not registering specifically to vote, nor are they aware. Nor is that group even closed - anyone from the vast Internet could join tomorrow and vote. Do you want to count them?

So that's apples to oranges.

On the web, when you want to measure engagement you'd measure number of return visitors or number of visitors that use one function vs another. One set up parameters like "active visitor (once a week)" and "active visitors (once a month)" and then evaluates ratios and the change over time of those ratios.

You can map things like keywords and amount of time the relevant threads stay in the top 20 active threads. There are a lot of ways to evaluate stickiness or interactivity but using registered users (of which a percent are "dead" voters that have not been back here since x years) is not an effective metric. It has bad inertia - because the number of registered users will always grow but it isn't a measure of weekly visits.

In short, an easy calc that would give you a more valid engagement would be number of participants vs users present during the poll's first weeks.