Audio-Lingual (broad definition)Upon reading ownerzeff’s additional comments above, I believe that I now have a better understanding of what he means by “
audio-lingual” courses. My initial impression and reply were based on the assumption that any language course that included a component of recorded audio as part of the materials would meet his criteria. Thus, the Cortina Language School courses that were the first to incorporate Thomas Edison’s phonograph cylinders at the dawn of the twentieth century, and every other course having an audio component that has been published since that time, would be an “audio-lingual” course. However, ownerzeff’s additional comments seem to direct the discussion to a very specific definition of the term “audio-lingual” method …
Audio-Lingual (narrow definition)A simple search of the Internet lead me to the
Wikipedia article on “
audio-lingual” method:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio-lingual_method In the light of this article, and ownerzeff’s additional comments above, it now seems to me that he is referring what some of us might commonly refer to as the “
FSI-Basic style” of courses known for the massive repetition of sentence-pattern drills. Hence the reference to Modern Russian, Spoken Language Services, Beginning Polish, First Year Polish, Beginning Japanese, and the like.
OwnerzeffOwnerzeff, could you please
confirm/correct my revised impression? In any event, working under the assumption that this narrower definition applies, given the list of languages to which you made specific reference, it now seems that the following materials would apply:
RussianModern Russian
SLS Spoken Russian
DLI Basic Russian: In this latter case, obtaining a complete set of the texts and audio recordings is not that evident as there are multiple versions of the DLI Russian courses on the JLU Archives database. Also, depending on the course, at times, the DLI pattern drills were crafted in a deliberately simple fashion so as to focus only on the point of grammar in question, whereas the FSI pattern drills focused on grammar, sentence structure, and development of vocabulary.
Persian (Farsi)FSI Persian (Farsi): You can locate the
combined text and audio files on the Live Lingua Project website.
https://www.livelingua.com/fsi-language-courses.phpDLI Basic Persian: From what I have read elsewhere, the DLI Basic Persian course was very comprehensive. Unfortunately, the files available on the JLU Archives database are incomplete.
Modern Persian (Beginning & Intermediate): The University of Michigan published a highly-rated Persian/Farsi course in three levels for which they also offer 18 CDs worth of audio recordings. I do not know how the course is structured and it may not fit your criteria for an “audio-lingual” course. Nonetheless, given the positive reviews, it is worth checking out.
Other Persian courses: I have never come across a civilian variant of FSI-Basic-style Persian course.
DutchFSI Basic Dutch: Regrettably, it would appear that the FSI did not publish an FSI-Basic-style Dutch course. Given the lower demand, it might be that they simply sub-contracted the teaching to language schools or universities, but this is speculation on my part.
DLI Basic Dutch: Given that the JLU Archives contain a fairly comprehensive DLI Dutch Refresher course, it is reasonable to assume that a DLI Basic Dutch course once existed. Unfortunately, I have never come across such a course. Having looked at the Refresher course, my impression is that a very solid A2 Level would be a pre-requisite for using it.
Other Dutch courses: I have never come across a civilian variant of FSI-Basic-style Dutch course.
PolishBeginning Polish (Volumes I and II), by Schenker
First Year Polish, by Swan
Intermediate Polish, by Swan
SLS Spoken Polish: Note
carefully that this course is an
exact copy of Schenker’s Beginning Polish. Bizarrely, they do, indeed, still provide the audio recordings on cassettes!
Glossika Mass Sentence FilesWhile NOT a course, the Glossika Mass Sentence files do, indeed, present an “audio-lingual” component to accompany any A2+ Level individual programme.
Assimil DialoguesOkay, these are NOT sentence-pattern drills. Nonetheless, in my experience, rapidly progressing through a series of Assimil dialogues has an effect similar to that of practicing sentence-pattern drills. But then again, one could make the same comment about
any series of dialogues.
Good luck with your studies.