GSR vs FSI

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
Online
User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

GSR vs FSI

Postby sfuqua » Sun Sep 24, 2017 9:21 pm

I'm looking for some opinions.
Which course will take a learner further in 300 days at 20-30 minutes a day, glossika GSR or an equal amount of time spent on FSI?
I'm just looking for opinions

I've recently restarted the old glossika GSR course.

It's working great, but I'm having second thoughts.

After finishing glossika, I still won't know a single new thing about French grammar, except because of parallels with Spanish. I may (will!) be able to use many features of French grammar, but I never will be sure If I am doing things correctly.

I haven't used FSI French yet, because it is a huge course, and would probably take years to complete.

But if I learn more from it, it might be worth it, even if I only get part way through it in the time it would take to complete GSR.

One of the things I dislike about FSI it that you are usually focused on one language feature at a time; with FSI Spanish, I felt like I was forgetting the first half of the course before I finished the second half.

Whether I use Glossika or FSI, I will definitely do something with native speaker materials as a side activity.
2 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: GSR vs FSI

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Sep 24, 2017 10:26 pm

Good question! I have used the FSI, or equivalent, courses for all of the languages that I have studied, but have worked with the Glossika German files only. In my opinion, the FSI courses, despite the age of a very small portion of the vocabulary, still deploy a vastly greater and more varied vocabulary set than does Glossika. In addition, I found that the authors of the FSI sentence-pattern exercises displayed a greater sense of creativity in the composition of the materials (bearing in mind that the FSI courses begin at A0 whereas the Glossika files begin at A2). Seriously, for me, they are little gems of prose! One could hardly say the same of the Glossika files. Furthermore, the Glossika L2 sentences are known to have been created from one basic set of English sentences and that the translations are not always what native-speakers would expect or use, whereas the FSI courses were individually crafted either by native speakers or recognized experts in the target languages. I enjoyed the intensity and the forward motion of the Glossika files; however, I believe that this is their only advantage over the FSI sentence-pattern exercises. On balance, when well-employed, I would still recommend the aging FSI courses over Glossika. Afterthought: whereas the FSI materials were designed to support a complete, intensive, six-month-long classroom course, the Glossika materials were designed only as a supplement to other study materials. Thus, to a certain extent, comparing the two is a rather doubtful proposition.

Post-afterthought: While I sympathize with "One of the things I dislike about FSI it that you are usually focused on one language feature at a time; with FSI Spanish, I felt like I was forgetting the first half of the course before I finished the second half", which is most likely a reflection of the "over-learning" aspect of the audio-lingual method, I would argue that virtually all language courses focus on one major feature of a language per lesson unit. In addition, the individually-introduced features are integrated in a cumulative fashion as the courses progress; there is nothing unique to the FSI courses in this approach. Perhaps this feature is less apparent in the Glossika files because it is assumed that the student already possesses an A2 level of knowledge of the target language; thus, Glossika can mix several different grammatical concepts in their sentences. To conduct a valid comparison on such a basis, one would have to review the FSI sentence-pattern exercises at least half-way through the course.

EDITED:
Typos, of course.
Post-afterthought.
Minor corrections to the text: Speakeasy, think, then type!
9 x

Online
User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: GSR vs FSI

Postby sfuqua » Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:10 am

Thanks, speakeasy!
Your answer sounds pretty authoritative.

My only other reason to stick with gsr would be that it would be nice to finish something.
2 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
wwiding
Orange Belt
Posts: 145
Joined: Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:15 pm
Languages: English (N), French (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2151
x 162

Re: GSR vs FSI

Postby wwiding » Tue Sep 26, 2017 4:56 pm

sfuqua wrote:I'm looking for some opinions.
Which course will take a learner further in 300 days at 20-30 minutes a day, glossika GSR or an equal amount of time spent on FSI?
I'm just looking for opinions

I've recently restarted the old glossika GSR course.

It's working great, but I'm having second thoughts.

After finishing glossika, I still won't know a single new thing about French grammar, except because of parallels with Spanish. I may (will!) be able to use many features of French grammar, but I never will be sure If I am doing things correctly.

I haven't used FSI French yet, because it is a huge course, and would probably take years to complete.

But if I learn more from it, it might be worth it, even if I only get part way through it in the time it would take to complete GSR.

One of the things I dislike about FSI it that you are usually focused on one language feature at a time; with FSI Spanish, I felt like I was forgetting the first half of the course before I finished the second half.

Whether I use Glossika or FSI, I will definitely do something with native speaker materials as a side activity.


I'm still kind of a beginner in French but maybe my experience will help. I did glossika GSR for a while and I felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it. Now I'm doing DLI and I feel like I'm getting waaaaay more out of it. I suspect I'd feel the same way if I did FSI. One thing I really like about DLI is the short conversations, I shadow and dictate them to help make my passive skills active. Once I figure out why the audio sounds high pitched in audacity, I'm going to cut the conversations out and make my own audio files. That should give me about 6 lessons per one hour of audio which I'll listen to in the car on the way to work for review.

I bet you'll get more out of FSI too. It may take you longer to get through FSI, but it'll probably teach you to speak much better than GSI. Especially if you cut out useful parts to shadow or listen to in the car etc. Whatever you choose, goodluck and don't forget to have fun!
1 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: garyb, Kraut and 2 guests