Using DLI French as a beginner

[HockeyKnight]

Hello everyone!

I am brand new to language learning and I have been lurking this forum for a bit, so I decided to go ahead and make an account and begin my language learning journey.

I would love to visit France in 1-2 years, and my goal would be to reach a B1 level within a 1-2 year time frame. I have heard that B2 is extremely difficult to attain in a self-learning environment(even for the most perseverant and dedicated students), but my goal is not to be able to attend university in France or work as a real estate agent in France or discuss business negotiations. My goal is to be able to successfully travel to France and communicate in everyday topics without much strain, feel comfortable in non-English speaking areas of France, read the newspaper with a dictionary without too much strain, and to respect the language. For me, this sounds like B1 and a goal I think (and hope) is reasonably attainable in a 1-2 year period. I want to be a competent tourist more or less. I want to take on this goal as I have never learned a language before and would love to be able to learn a language and communicate successfully with others while on trips to French speaking destinations.

I have seen outstanding praise for the DLI courses on this forum. It appears as a happy medium between a course such as Assimil with no drills or exercises and a course such as FSI with massive repetitions(and from what I hear, can be difficult for a raw beginner to use from scratch). I have tried Pimsleur, and I really do enjoy their repetitions and practice that it gives with the language, so I was thinking DLI might be worth a look as it employs a lot of drills in their course. I have, however, heard mixed reviews about its use for a raw beginner. I have heard some say that it is better used after you have already acquired a base in the language, as the explanations may not be very clear and the course is almost entirely monolingual.

My plan as of now is to use DLI for an hour in the mornings and then use Pimsleur for an hour in the evening for a total of 2 hours of practice a day. I would also have Essential French Grammar to refer to for grammar explanations. After I complete the courses I would dive in to native materials and practice with online tutors and language exchange partners.

I have a few questions about this. First, would DLI be efficient to use for a raw beginner that has never studied a foreign language before? What would be an appropriate time frame for completing both Pimsleur 1-5 and the DLI course with 2 hours a day of study? Would B1 level be achievable with DLI, Pimsleur, and Essential French Grammar within a year or so? Do you think those materials in combination would be an effective learning method?

Thank you all for reading!

[Speakeasy]

Hello, HockeyKnight, welcome to the forum! From a reading of your post, it seems to me that you are well-versed in the features and strengths of the (justifiably) more popular language-learning materials. A quick reply to your question:

As you are probably aware, the DLI and FSI language courses of the 1960’s-1970’s were prepared for use in a classroom setting. As such, they would tend to offer less support to the independent language-learner who must act as his/her own teacher. Putting aside their age, the feature that distinguishes these materials most from current commercially-prepared courses is that they employed the audio-lingual method of language instruction which relies on the massive practicing of sentence-pattern drills as a means of internalizing the L2’s language structure. For this reason, as part of the design of many audio-lingual courses, the accompanying notes on grammar can seem a little skeletal. Should this pose a problem, the solution lies in consulting a simple grammar for clarification. Having reviewed the DLI French Basic course in considerable detail, save for this truly minor point, I would say that this course represents an “ideal” companion to the Assimil and Pimsleur courses, not only as a change of pace, but most particularly for driving home the L2’s structure. DLI French Basic is a great course for novices, you’ll do just fine!

The only “problem” (and it is not really a problem) with your plan of study is that the Pimsleur programme proceeds at a much slower pace than many other language methods. Thus, as you progress with the DLI French Basic and Assimil French courses, you could find yourself outpacing the latter. This could lead to feelings of frustration and a jumping-ahead in the Pimsleur lessons in attempts at locating the equivalent level of instruction and in efforts aimed at catching up to the former (in my opinion, doing so would be an error). There are a number of ways of viewing this:

(1) You could consider Pimsleur superfluous to your studies and simply remove it from our study plan. To a large extent, you wouldn’t be missing much. Still, the subtle manner by which Pimsleur introduces and reinforces both the L2 structure and some basic vocabulary is an experience that you might not want to forego, so ...

(2) You could, in the initial phase of your studies, make Pimsleur the “core” of your study plan and work through Levels I, II, III more-or-less intensively, all the while following along at a somewhat leisurely pace with Assimil and DLI. Thereafter, you could put aside Pimsleur for a spell, concentrate on a combination of Assimil and DLI and, having reached about the three-quarters’ mark in these courses, and without abandoning them, reembark on Pimsleur IV and V both as reinforcement of the L2’s structure and for the sheer pleasure of working with this programme. By doing so, you would also be in a much better position to appreciate the Pimsleur materials.

(3) Several variants of the above alternatives are possible: they all work.

Given your choice of materials, you should have no difficulty attaining a level of CEFR B1. Thereafter, and perhaps even concurrently, you might wish to exposure yourself to native materials (slow news is a nice place to start).

Enjoy your studies!

EDITED:
Expansion of the text.
Typos, tinkering.

[iguanamon]

First, welcome to the forum, HockeyKnight! This response may seem contradictory, but I want you to know what you will be looking at if you do DLI French. Ahhh, just saw that Speakeasy posted his response, hopefully mine will serve to supplement his for you.

The typical route here for a French beginner is to use Assimil, Pimsleur and/or Michel Thomas.

I have used and completed two DLI Basic Courses as a self-learner. To preface this, both were after I had already learned a language, Spanish, to a high level on my own. Many times on this forum I have stated that I consider the courses to be the most thorough and complete beginner courses I have ever used. Because of my experience with Spanish, I was able to skip ahead to Volume 4 of DLI Portuguese. I started with DLI Haitian Creole from the beginning. The DLI French Basic Course is similar in style and organization to both of the courses I completed. I downloaded the DLI French Basic Course because, well... it's what we do here when we've learned a few languages because- you just never know. Also, I used multiple resources when learning Portuguese and Haitian Creole- including Pimsleur and native materials/speakers as a part of my multi-track approach- though DLI Basic was my main resource at the time. At the time I'd do DLI every morning, usually taking 4-5 days on each lesson before moving on to the next one (depending on difficulty). In the later volumes- 2-3 days per lesson is doable.

Anyway, DLI Basic is not a "hand-holding" course. It throws the learner into the deep end of the pool and expects you to start swimming. There is little English used in the course, you'll have to accept this. It will help to "OCR" the pdf's so you can copy and paste words and sentences into DeepL or Google Translate in the beginning.

The course concentrates in the beginning a lot on phonology. This is not a surprise. Pronunciation is very important in any language, but it is especially important in French. There are a lot of drills, but the course also contains conversation dialogs, cultural readings, comprehension questions, a vocabulary glossary and a grammar review of the main points covered in each lesson. The drills tie in with these within the lesson, so the learner drills what the lesson is teaching. If you haven't already downloaded the course, go ahead and do so. After downloading go to Volume 5 and have a look at the pdf. You'll see that the first lesson in Volume 5 starts with Perception drills, then more drills, exercises, dialog in English followed by the same dialog in French, a cartoon of the dialog which you are supposed to use to spur your own recreation of said dialog, dialog questions, exercises and drills, a reading- followed by more exercises and drills, grammar section and a glossary.

The dialog has built in pauses where the learner is supposed to repeat after the speakers and take each speaker's role. After I got quicker, I was able to do my role twice- barely before the next speaker started. I like to make the exercise intense .

So, it's not all drills, but there are a lot of drills in each lesson... which is one of the reasons why I like the DLI courses. The dialogs, readings and grammar liven it up so it's about more than just drills. After a while, the learner begins to see the point of all this and how everything is designed to fit together and how each component cleverly builds and expands on the other.

Should you do this course as a monolingual beginner? You will have to be self-disciplined and be mindful that these courses were never intended for self-learners (though, they can be used successfully by self-learners as I and others have proven). You will have to accept that it is a demanding course. Remember, these were designed by and for the US Department of Defense. I am a veteran of the US Army. I respond well to this no-nonsense kind of training. You, may not. The course was written in 1968. The language taught is 51 years old. Obviously,there are still French-speakers alive today who date from that era. The language taught in the course is a little more formal than many courses teach today. None of this is a problem if you use other resources along with DLI- Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, French in Action, or really any of the myriad French resources available out there- ask PeterMollenburg, he's either done or looked at almost every French course for English-speakers available .

People who used this course attended classes at the DLI Monterrey Language Institute in California. They had native-speaker instructors and were also exposed to native materials during classes. The students lived, breathed and even slept French every hour of every day. Some succeeded and some didn't. So yes, a beginner can do the course. It will be a challenge though, for sure, to maintain self-discipline and be persistent and consistent enough to finish the course. If I were to decide to learn French, I'd use the course, but... I am an experienced learner. I'm not bragging, but having learned related languages, I should be able to pick up French without too much difficulty, if I ever decide to learn it.

I hope this answers some of your questions. The only real way to know if the course is right for you is to jump in and do it. If I can be of further help, just ask. Again, bienvenue et bonne chance !

Edit

What would be an appropriate time frame for completing both Pimsleur 1-5 and the DLI course with 2 hours a day of study? Would B1 level be achievable with DLI, Pimsleur, and Essential French Grammar within a year or so? Do you think those materials in combination would be an effective learning method?

Yes, B1 is achievable with your plan. When I did DLI, I did it in the mornings and I did Pimsleur throughout the day and/or in the evenings. Yeah, you can get ahead of yourself with either course, but I find it helps to give me synergy and make what I'm learning more "sticky" when I see it in more than one context. Having a basic grammar book is a good supplement. Other than my recommending adding in some comprehensible native material, what you have described is a good plan

[rdearman]

I would say you need to think about all aspects of a language. The courses you mention are mostly audio, so I think you should include an element of text into your study.

My goal is to be able to successfully travel to France and communicate in everyday topics without much strain, feel comfortable in non-English speaking areas of France, read the newspaper with a dictionary without too much strain, and to respect the language.

You can do this by reading just about anything in French, but if you can find a paperback or two that would be best. Going through and reading a book and looking up words will help you find additional vocabulary outside the courses. Especially since you said you wanted to be able to read some things as well.

If you cannot find a book then you can just print out random French Wikipedia articles and read them.