The use of FSI, a question of efficiency.

[reineke]

The myth of neat histories - the downfall of the audiolingual method

"Skinner believed that people were really just machines and so if you wanted some kind of response from them all you needed was stimulus. Something like an electric shock would probably do the trick.

Poor misguided TEFL teachers were caught in the hypnotic gaze of Skinner and developed a ridiculous style of teaching called the Audio-lingual method. This involved forcing students to sit in a classroom listening to recordings of conversations for hours on end all the while repeating mantras like so many zombies. Skinner enjoyed this depraved form of torture. In fact it helped him stay young.

One day, a brave young hero called Noam appeared and with a swish of his sword of logic he defeated the evil Skinner. Chomsky showed that language was innate and that people didn't have to be robots. On this day pair work was born and since language was innate no one needed to teach grammar anymore. Native speaker teachers everywhere rejoiced...

Chomsky's review lead to the death of Audiolingualism

In his ELTJ review of reviews, Alan Maley describes Chomsky's review as 'destructive' and one that 'changed the course of events'. Now while it is undeniable that Chomsky's review was influential and made his name, did Chomsky kill off Audiolingualism?

After reading the previous section it becomes clear that this is unlikely.

"That an approach where people mechanically practiced artificial sentences while worrying greatly about making mistakes should be replaced by an approach which allowed free 'authentic' conversation with little care for errors, should surprise no one at all.

It's also difficult to properly perform an autopsy on the undead. As authors, like Scrivener note, many of the the techniques of 'ALM' "continue to have a strong influence over many classrooms"

http://malingual.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-myth-of-neat-histories.html

On Chomsky's Appraisal of Skinner's Verbal Behavior: A Half Century of Misunderstanding

"The history of the writing of Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957), Chomsky's review (1959), and MacCorquodale's rebuttal (1970) are briefly summarized. Chomsky's recent reflections on his review are analyzed: Chomsky's refusal to acknowledge the review's errors or its aggressive tone is consistent with his polemical style but comes at a minor cost in consistency and plausibility. However, his remarks about the place of Skinner's work in science reveal misunderstandings so great that they undercut the credibility of the review substantially. The gradual growth in the influence of Skinner's book suggests that its legacy will endure."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223153/


Audiolingual Method and Behaviorism: From Misunderstanding to Myth

Abstract

This article contends that the modern descendant of B. F. Skinner's experimental analysis of behavior, ‘behavior analysis,’ and as well his 1957 masterwork Verbal Behavior, have rarely if ever been seriously contemplated by applied linguists for possible contributions to the field. Rather, a pat literature of dismissal has developed that justifies itself on (a) a fictitious link between the audiolingual method and undifferentiated behaviorism, and/or (b) a demonstrably erroneous notion that operant psychology is too simplistic to effectively take up language issues. In reality, behavior analysis is alive, well, and making significant contributions in applied language settings, but not typically in the second language area.

http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/3/519.abstract

Chomsky's review

https://chomsky.info/1967____/

MacCorquodale's rebuttal

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2733443/pdf/behavan00029-0052.pdf

[iguanamon]

I'll preface this by saying that I am not a linguist, nor have I studied linguistics. I'm just a guy who has learned a few languages on his own. I think this is setting up a false dichotomy. I don't think any of us here have used an audio-lingual method solely on its own to learn a language. I certainly haven't. What I find useful about the DLI courses (I've never used FSI) is that the drills helped me to cement the grammar into my mind and helped me with output and thinking in the language. In short, having used DLI while learning two languages, it has given me a very good foundation which I built on while I was using it and after I completed it.

I am fully cognizant that this type of course isn't a good fit for everyone. Neither is Michel Thomas, Anki or Assimil a good fit for me. This doesn't mean that there is no value in these methods. There obviously is a great deal of value in them. The more I do this, the more I am convinced that there is no perfect way to learn a language and there are many, many ways to get there. What is most efficient? I believe what is most efficient is what works for an individual. Finding that out, unfortunately, takes a lot of trial and error, and that's where it is tough to give advice to monolinguals learning a language. Nobody wants to hear that when setting out to learn a language. Many times they want to know, "how can I learn this language without wasting time and as quickly as possible". There's not a cut and dried path to share that will fit all. The processes can be shared but I believe the one key ingredient to successfully learning a second language to a high level is desire. Desire is not quantifiable. Desire can make it possible for even a bad method to provide at least some results and that same desire can lead a learner to find and try better methods for better results. That's one reason we're all here on this forum and joined.

So to sum up, the FSI and DLI courses were never intended for self-learners but they can be used by self-learners as a part of their learning strategy and many can gain good results from their use, at least in my experience and observation. They are not The ANSWER. When one of you comes up with the one true way, please let us know.

[Elexi]

Another piece from Dr Conti which (while ostensibly critical) suggests how AL materials like FSI are useful and how they can be used by learners:

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2 ... n-fluency/

[jsega]

The question:

FSI French - Has anyone actually completed the whole thing?

.. didn't have many takers. It's easier to criticize FSI than to actually complete the course. Based on the reviews so far, people who have actually completed the course were generally pleased with the results.

Anecdotal evidence is not a definite proof that drills are the answer to every language learning problem but it's an indication that they might be useful.

...in certain circumstances.

But the thing is that people who complete a course arequite likely to describe it positively, and people who have negative experiences of a course are likely to quit early -- so if you discount the views of people who don't complete a course, every course is going to come out pretty damned good in all the reviews.

The way I see it, both extremes are not very helpful. Almost all the reviews of a program like Rosetta Stone (just using this as an example since it's another widely discussed course) that I've ever read are by people who have not actually completed it, and they are of course overwhelmingly negative. I have to say, these reviews have also been largely unhelpful to people like myself looking to form their own opinions.

Some contradictory/subjective reviews (including by people on this forum) I've found funny, to drive the point home on why incomplete reviews are not helpful to newcomers:

"Rosetta Stone is boring." -an individual whom has not finished it but HAS finished and praises FSI which he/she also admits is boring.

"Rosetta Stone will not make you fluent." - criticizes a person whom later says in response to a criticism of a program he/she likes, "No course will make you fluent."

"Rosetta Stone doesn't teach grammar." -said person whom also claims they don't bother with explicit grammar until intermediate level.

"Rosetta Stone has no translations." -says person whom also says they only like their audio in target language, you shouldn't rely on translations because you need to start thinking in the target language, etc.

My point is that there are already too many stilted and severely subjective, negative reviews, that are ultimately complete contradictions when put into a larger language learning context.

They make absolutely no sense when you come across other reviews and opinions by the same person, probably because they are drive-by reviews by people who never finished it.

This is also very confusing to people trying to understand language learning methodologies in general.

[Cainntear]

The way I see it, both extremes are not very helpful.

Agreed.

Almost all the reviews of a program like Rosetta Stone (just using this as an example since it's another widely discussed course) that I've ever read are by people who have not actually completed it, and they are of course overwhelmingly negative. I have to say, these reviews have also been largely unhelpful to people like myself looking to form their own opinions.

In all honesty, I find that most reviews are unhelpful, whether positive or negative.

Positive reviews tend to be remarkably similar to the sales blurb for the course. This isn't a sign of fake reviews, it's just standard human behaviour --people tend to repeat what they hear. RS claims to teach you like you learn your first language, and that keeps getting repeated. Most reviewers don't really stop and think about whether they ever responded to mummy saying "a boy is running" by pointing out of their prams to a boy running.

Similarly, as you point out, people's complaints don't always match their philosophy or their genuine pedagogical preferences. What we've got is people who are not trained enough in language learning to identify what's wrong -- they just know they're frustrated, and they find something to pin the blame on.

Consider (and I know, I'm risking another flamewar here) the idea of "proper" vs "bad" native grammar. If you write a well composed article with "bad" grammar, it will slip by the notice of most teachers and newspaper editors. But if you write a poorly composed article with bad grammar, many editors will respond by "correcting" your grammar, leaving you with an article that is still poorly composed. The edits are not factually wrong (perhaps the author split a couple of infinitives, started a few sentences with "and" and finished a few with prepositions) but they obscure the fact that the real problem (e.g. that the author didn't structure his paragraphs is such as way as to deal with distinct problems separately. And so it is with most reviews -- the reviewer knows something's wrong, states a few facts, and assumes the facts are what's wrong.

Let's take one of your examples and drill further behind the criticism:

"Rosetta Stone doesn't teach grammar." -said person whom also claims they don't bother with explicit grammar until intermediate level.

"Rosetta Stone has no translations." -says person whom also says they only like their audio in target language, you shouldn't rely on translations because you need to start thinking in the target language, etc.

It's probably over a decade since I used the free demo CD-ROM, so my memory's a bit fuzzy, but there's one thing I remember: I didn't really know what anything meant after a while. I had a fuzzy notion of tense, but no notion of aspect -- i.e. I didn't understand the grammar. Eventually I found that I was just associating the whole audio utterance with the image, as though it was just a label for the picture.

The contradiction in the first quote is less than you think -- every course that teaches language teaches grammar, even if not explicitly, because you cannot learn to speak without learning grammar. But when you don't know whether what you're saying means "the boy is running", "the boy runs" or both (and when you start on the past tense, you don't know if you're saying "was running", "ran" or both), you're clearly not successfully intuiting grammar, which is what's supposed to happen when you don't study it actively. And one way of knowing what it means is translation, which I reckon is the real issue behind the second quote -- he/she was really saying "there is nothing to indicate clearly what it means, including, but not limited to, a mother tongue translation".

That, in the end, is the real problem with Rosetta Stone: it places a lot of forms in front of you, but never makes the meaning clear. It takes the Skinner's behaviorist thought and makes it even worse, by making the stimulus and response even less related to the target knowledge/behaviour than FSI-style drilling.

[YtownPolyglot]

There is a problem with teaching a second language the way you learned your first language. After five years of my native English, I spoke very much like a five-year-old. I have higher goals than that.

[jsega]

The way I see it, both extremes are not very helpful.

Agreed.

Almost all the reviews of a program like Rosetta Stone (just using this as an example since it's another widely discussed course) that I've ever read are by people who have not actually completed it, and they are of course overwhelmingly negative. I have to say, these reviews have also been largely unhelpful to people like myself looking to form their own opinions.

In all honesty, I find that most reviews are unhelpful, whether positive or negative.

Positive reviews tend to be remarkably similar to the sales blurb for the course. This isn't a sign of fake reviews, it's just standard human behaviour --people tend to repeat what they hear. RS claims to teach you like you learn your first language, and that keeps getting repeated. Most reviewers don't really stop and think about whether they ever responded to mummy saying "a boy is running" by pointing out of their prams to a boy running.

Similarly, as you point out, people's complaints don't always match their philosophy or their genuine pedagogical preferences. What we've got is people who are not trained enough in language learning to identify what's wrong -- they just know they're frustrated, and they find something to pin the blame on.

Consider (and I know, I'm risking another flamewar here) the idea of "proper" vs "bad" native grammar. If you write a well composed article with "bad" grammar, it will slip by the notice of most teachers and newspaper editors. But if you write a poorly composed article with bad grammar, many editors will respond by "correcting" your grammar, leaving you with an article that is still poorly composed. The edits are not factually wrong (perhaps the author split a couple of infinitives, started a few sentences with "and" and finished a few with prepositions) but they obscure the fact that the real problem (e.g. that the author didn't structure his paragraphs is such as way as to deal with distinct problems separately. And so it is with most reviews -- the reviewer knows something's wrong, states a few facts, and assumes the facts are what's wrong.

Let's take one of your examples and drill further behind the criticism:
........

Agreed, and I can tell you specifically are aware of this, but I just want to stress my post wasn't about Rosetta Stone specifically, just so no one thinks I'm trying to derail the thread that I started .

You've rightly pointed out that positive reviews can be just as bad and misleading.

My hope in this thread was to attempt to extract some collective language learning wisdom in the context of a specific course (which I thought might help keep the conversation on track therefore being more useful). I thought FSI would be a good catalyst for this conversation.

So in this respect, I don't actually think it's a requirement at all to have finished a course to have useful input around the larger conversation, as long as this person is giving their honest reflections on their own language learning strategies and why the methodology (clearly outlined and free to all to read in the case of FSI) used by FSI, in this instance, doesn't work for them, or why they possibly think it would work but they simply haven't tried it, etc.

Anyways, for the most part I think this thread has gone pretty well. It certainly contains far more useful information than your average youtube product review. Will I actually end up using FSI? I don't know....maybe

[Cainntear]

It certainly contains far more useful information than your average youtube product review.

If we're comparing it to your average youtube product review, does the thread end when I say this...?

If you like FSI, you'll love Learning Spanish Like Crazy!

[reineke]

"A bit skinny, but so is my Spanish."

"I don't remember buying this... Don't even know where it is. Cannot give a proper review."

Both are applicable here.

I like reading reviews.

[kunsttyv]

Whenever I come across bold statements such as, let's say, that the audio-lingual methodology has been debunked by modern theory on second language acquisition, or that FSI courses are by nature inefficient, when it's obvious that this is not the case for the many people who have had success using these methods as part of their language learning routine, I tend to just filter out those voices from there on.

This is especially true when the bold statements are accompanied by some personal sets of theoretical underpinnings that are meant to explain (scientifically) why the others have got it wrong. It's not that I dislike people holding contrarian beliefs, or that people have ones conflicting with my own, or really any other kind. But when people come to the debate shoving a bunch of personally assembled research in front of them, and often in a slightly condescending manner, I lose interest immediately. Language learning research definitely has its place, and can be helpful to us solo learners (especially the experimental research in my opinion), but don't try to extrapolate too far away from the original highly controlled and specific research environment, or you'll end up invalidating the anecdotal experiences of others any which way.

I'm very sympathetic towards iguanamon's there's no cut and dried path. This is the kind of things I will likely listen to, not the absolutes.