FSI Dutch

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FSI Dutch

Postby rowanexer » Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:48 am

Does anyone know if this exists? FSI categorised Dutch as a category 1 language, so presumably they must have taught it. Did they use another commercial course to teach it? (As they did with Japanese)
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Le Baron
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby Le Baron » Wed Mar 22, 2023 3:46 pm

rowanexer wrote:Does anyone know if this exists? FSI categorised Dutch as a category 1 language, so presumably they must have taught it. Did they use another commercial course to teach it? (As they did with Japanese)

I can't see that it ever existed, despite them categorising the difficulty. I've never seen it. However the DLI course exists.

edit - well it seems it very much did exist. The link below talks about it and offers a link which goes to yojik, but it's a 404 error. Strange.

https://www.mezzoguild.com/online-dutch ... /#fsidutch
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby iguanamon » Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:20 pm

Out of curiosity, I did a search myself. I checked ERIC The US government Education Resources Information Center and found nothing.

Even Donovan Nagel of Mezzo Guild, isn't perfect. He may have gotten FSI confused with DLI, or not, I don't know. I don't think it exists as a course for FSI.
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby Le Baron » Wed Mar 22, 2023 6:32 pm

iguanamon wrote:Out of curiosity, I did a search myself. I checked ERIC The US government Education Resources Information Center and found nothing.

Even Donovan Nagel of Mezzo Guild, isn't perfect. He may have gotten FSI confused with DLI, or not, I don't know. I don't think it exists as a course for FSI.

Yes I assumed an error prior to the edit, but I wondered how someone could write an entire post then look for a non-existent link and also post it!

As for the course itself it must exist as materials somewhere because it is advertised as an existing course in this list (1997):

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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby iguanamon » Wed Mar 22, 2023 7:43 pm

Le Baron wrote:...As for the course itself it must exist as materials somewhere because it is advertised as an existing course in this list (1997)...

Shame we can't ask speakeasy about it, he'd know, or would die trying to find out. Our member Ericounet manages the Yojik site. If it were out there, he'd most likely have it up.

The US Dept. of State (which has supervision over the Foreign Service) lists Dutch as a current language of instruction
USDOS wrote:...The School of Language Studies (SLS) provides language and culture training to U.S. government employees with job-related needs. It addresses all aspects of language training, from classroom instruction and distance learning, to learning consultation services and testing..."Dutch 24 weeks"...

The upshot of all of this is that the old 1970's-1990's materials that are up for download came from an era of instruction when books were still used. I doubt if the material currently used for instruction is in the same format as the old 20th Century materials- books and tapes. It is probably more of a computer/online based format... which will most likely never make it to public domain due to difficulty of computer based formats going obsolete and/or compatibility issues. Iron Mike will know more about this, or maybe can find it out. I think the age of government language-instruction materials going public domain is over- though I may be wrong.

Obviously, this does not address whether or not a traditional FSI "book + audio" course for Dutch exists. I doubt it does, at least as we know it from what is out there now.
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby rowanexer » Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:24 pm

Looking in this survey of materials they list an FSI Dutch reader:
https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED228863/

Weinstein, Allen I. and De Boeck, Anny B. FSI Dutch
Reader. (Basic Course Series) Washington, DC: Foreign
Service Institute, Dept. of State, 1980. xi, 334 pp.

As well as three audio-lingual courses. Which perhaps they used in the FSI school?

Bloomfield, Leonard. Spoken Dutch, Units 1-12 . Ithaca,
NY: Spoken Language Services Inc., 1975. 260 pp.
[Reprint of Holt 1945 ed.] Cassettes (5). [ED 089 547
MF only; includes Units 13-30 + vocabulary]

Lagerwey, Walter. Speak Dutch: An Audio-Lingual
Course. Amsterdam, Netherlands: J.M. Meulenhoff and
Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College, 1968, 630 pp.
Tapes, Workbook . Author, 1973 • [ED 024 029]

Trim, J.L.M. et al. Levend Nederlands: Een audio-
vis uele curs us Nederlands voor Buitenlanders.
Amsterdam, Netherlands: Free University of Amsterdam
and Cambridge, England and New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 1975. 320 pp. Tapes, filmstrips.
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby Le Baron » Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:18 pm

rowanexer wrote:As well as three audio-lingual courses. Which perhaps they used in the FSI school?

I don't know the first course, but the other two are purely for the general public. Levend Nederlands was a course by Cambridge University's department of linguistics (I've done it).

In any case FSI seem to have devised their own courses tailored to their requirements and also based on their own research.
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby rowanexer » Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:29 pm

Le Baron wrote:
rowanexer wrote:As well as three audio-lingual courses. Which perhaps they used in the FSI school?

I don't know the first course, but the other two are purely for the general public. Levend Nederlands was a course by Cambridge University's department of linguistics (I've done it).

In any case FSI seem to have devised their own courses tailored to their requirements and also based on their own research.


The only reference I can find to the FSI Dutch textbook is this essay where the author of the Dutch reader talks about the Dutch course and how they have a textbook, but doesn't mention the name.

https://eric.ed.gov/?q=ED096835&id=ED096835

And then this appears to be the Spoken Dutch course from above, which mentions it was made for the US Armed Forces.
https://eric.ed.gov/?q=spoken+dutch+%22 ... d=ED089553
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Re: FSI Dutch

Postby Le Baron » Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:39 pm

That book is likely from a predecessor school, because it's from 1944 (as a published book) and the FSI was only established in 1947.
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