Creative Ways to Use FSI

General discussion about learning languages
Tomás
Blue Belt
Posts: 554
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:48 pm
Languages: English (N). Currently studying Spanish (intermediate), French (false beginner).
x 661

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby Tomás » Wed Apr 06, 2016 6:26 pm

hulk___smash wrote:Guys,

I've put a video/screencast up on the homepage of my website to show you how the application is looking thus far:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.net

There is still a lot of work to do in terms of development. Development time is all I worried about at the moment, the digitization can be streamlined by a team once I find funding somehow.

I hope you like it and let me know what additions you'd like to see.

Darren


Looks great Darren. For me, just having a separate audio clip for each exercise would be enough. That said, for people working on pronunciation, I can see how breaking out each word could be very useful.
0 x

User avatar
hulk___smash
White Belt
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2016 10:54 pm
Languages: English (N), Portuguese (C1), Spanish (B2), German (A2)
x 34
Contact:

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby hulk___smash » Wed Apr 06, 2016 8:18 pm

All the audio will be indexed, so this is completely doable.

Whether it be part of the course itself, well I imagine it'll be a completely separate page, i'll have to give some thought to the design on that front.

Please do keep the ideas coming.

Here is an update to the web application interface. It's a priority to make it super usable on mobile and tablet, as that's where I do most of my learning (on the move). Here is a video demo update:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/videos/fsi-language-courses.mp4
3 x
Slow traveller, language learner, web developer, digital nomad
Administrator of http://www.fsi-language-courses.net

User avatar
hulk___smash
White Belt
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2016 10:54 pm
Languages: English (N), Portuguese (C1), Spanish (B2), German (A2)
x 34
Contact:

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby hulk___smash » Fri Apr 08, 2016 9:06 pm

Just to let you know, I've put up a prototype of the FSI web application for you guys to test out.

It's quite simple at the moment, it just goes over the audio from German Basic - Unit 1 (Basic Sentences).

Still, I'd appreciate your feedback. It's a fun little project.
http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/fsi-web-application-prototype/
3 x
Slow traveller, language learner, web developer, digital nomad
Administrator of http://www.fsi-language-courses.net

User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10462

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sat Apr 16, 2016 9:12 pm

It looks super-cool! Do you plan to add the feature to every course on your site?
0 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

User avatar
hulk___smash
White Belt
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2016 10:54 pm
Languages: English (N), Portuguese (C1), Spanish (B2), German (A2)
x 34
Contact:

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby hulk___smash » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:19 pm

Hey Jeff,

Ideally I would like to add it for every Basic course, but that is a monster undertaking. I'll start with the main courses, such as German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, as these represent about 60% of the total demand. Then from there i'll see how much interest they gather, if people seem to like it, i'll side with some volunteers to get the Chinese course and others into the application.

The 'From Spanish to Portuguese' course has been completely digitized already, I just need to add it into the application and upload it. (Although unit 4's audio is missing, I am looking to get this privately recorded with a Brazilian friend while I am here in Colombia.)

I intend to make a lot of the exercises interactive as well. Is there anything else you'd like to see for the courses?

Darren
2 x
Slow traveller, language learner, web developer, digital nomad
Administrator of http://www.fsi-language-courses.net

User avatar
Pekoral
White Belt
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 8:52 pm
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Languages: Swedish (N), English (C2), German (B1), French (A2), Standard Chinese (A2), Japanese (A2), Latin, Akkadian, Sumerian
x 52
Contact:

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby Pekoral » Wed Apr 20, 2016 10:22 am

Wow, that thing's amazing!
0 x
pekoral, litterärt verk kännetecknat av den icke avsedda komiska effekt som uppstår ur kontrasten mellan författarens aningslösa banalitet och hans misslyckade ansträngningar att imitera en högstämd eller högtidlig stil.

User avatar
diplomaticus
Yellow Belt
Posts: 79
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:27 am
Languages: English (N)
x 83

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby diplomaticus » Fri Apr 22, 2016 5:39 pm

There seems to be an issue with the audio when it was condensed down to a rar file for emailing from:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/fsi ... st-course/

When going to the audio from your website directly, it goes to this page:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/lan ... %2001A.mp3

Regarding the audio for the first lesson for page 1.5, on the site it runs is at a reasonable speed from ~:40-~1:32, so about 52 seconds.

When I clicked the link at the top to have the whole course emailed, the audio is a bit odd. It seemed to run faster, but in the rar file version it runs from :44 to 1:38, so actually about the same run-time or a sad slower. But the tempo of the voices is oddly fast and the audio sounds so fast that it is borderline silly. If you can email it to yourself and check it out, I think you'd agree. Obviously one can still use the audio from the website directly, but felt you'd wish to know. Sorry I don't know enough about audio editing to describe better what the issue is. Hope this is of help!
0 x
Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid.

User avatar
hulk___smash
White Belt
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2016 10:54 pm
Languages: English (N), Portuguese (C1), Spanish (B2), German (A2)
x 34
Contact:

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby hulk___smash » Sat Apr 23, 2016 6:07 pm

Hey diplomaticus,

Great work, thanks for pointing this out to me. I had no idea!

I wonder why that could be. I noticed I had problems when I was testing audio in the application that I am developing. I had all the times indexed perfectly, but in the application they would start at different intervals.

I ended up downloading the mp3, loading it into audacity and then re-exporting it at 128kbps. Once uploaded it worked fine.

I'll take a deeper look into this, again, thanks for pointing it out.

Darren
2 x
Slow traveller, language learner, web developer, digital nomad
Administrator of http://www.fsi-language-courses.net

User avatar
diplomaticus
Yellow Belt
Posts: 79
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:27 am
Languages: English (N)
x 83

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby diplomaticus » Sat Apr 23, 2016 6:54 pm

No problem. You are doing a great service to language learners, so the least we can all do is point out issues along the way.

The only thing I can think of is that the rar compression is somehow messing with the audio settings and then it isn't getting uncompressed on the way back out? Once you figure it out, please do share! I am curious on it from just a technical standpoint.

Also, your simulator of what will eventually be is super cool. Can't wait to get it for the Brazilian FAST Course ;)
0 x
Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid.

Paul S.
White Belt
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2016 8:48 pm
x 27

Re: Creative Ways to Use FSI

Postby Paul S. » Sat Apr 23, 2016 7:09 pm

I had briefly used the FSI course to learn French.Although it was free to use.Frankly I found it very old fashioned and mind numbingly boring.

The FSI Basic French course just did not suit me,it wasn't for me.

However I have heard that the FSI courses are very good and much better for less spoken languages like Hungarian and Turkish.
0 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: iguanamon, nathancrow77 and 2 guests