FSI FAST Spanish audio

[sfuqua]

I think I know the answer to this, but if I have missed something obvious:

Does anybody know where there is a copy of the audio for the FSI Spanish FAST course?

I've looked in the usual places.
It's a shame; the pdf seems to show a lot of material that would be good for familiarization and short term orientation.

[Speakeasy]

Hello, sfugua. Chasing the Holy Grail, are we? For the record, and for the benefit of some people who might not be aware, the "FSI-Language-Courses website" and its replicas have a PDF copy of the “FSI Spanish FAST” course, but do not have a copy of the audio files at present. Now then, I have been doing a bit of checking ...

There are still a few resellers of digitised versions of the FSI and DLI courses on eBay, all whom I suspect downloaded their materials from the FSI-Language-Courses website. I looked at their announcements and it is fairly clear that their offers are for the “FSI Spanish Programmatic” and “FSI Spanish Basic” courses. Although one reseller’s offer includes a copy of the PDF for the “FSI Spanish FAST” course, they specify that the audio is not included.

I just sent an Email to the owner of the former “Foreign Services Institute” online seller of the FSI courses, which also used to operate under the name of “Plurality Language”, asking him if he might have a copy of the “FSI Spanish FAST” course. I recall that his inventory was pretty much identical to that of the other online resellers; so, this is a long shot. I’ll let you know how this works out.

I tried searching the archives of the HTLAL in the hope of tracking down the Usernames of the gallant young language enthusiasts who worked on the project that eventually led to the creation of the FSI-Language-Courses website. Unfortunately, the HTLAL’s G-search function seems to be malfunctioning at present. In any event, I am under the impression that many of these individuals have moved on in life. Perhaps members Chung and Ericounet might be in a position to help us out? I suggest that you send a Private Message to Chung, drawing his attention to this discussion thread. As far as I understand, Ericounet is a very infrequent visitor to the LLORG; however, I will send him an Email (addendum: done). These efforts are unlikely to bear any fruit as, had the project team had a copy of the “FSI Spanish FAST” audio files, Ericounet would have most certainly uploaded them to his website.

EDITED:
Addition of the "for the record ..." text.
Confirmation of having sent an Email to Ericounet.

[Xmmm]

FYI, Italian FAST has audio ... but not for most of the drills. There's audio for vocab, pronunciation, and dialogues ... and that's about it. Often the drills are not even spelled out, but just kind of noted like "do this sort of thing in class for a while."


The course seems to be of less value for self-study than an Italian Basic course would have been. So even if the audio for Spanish exists, there may not be as much as you'd like.

[Speakeasy]

Hello, Xmmm. Based on my familiarity with the FSI FAST courses (French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian) and from a quick overview of the PDF of the FSI Spanish FAST course, I would most certainly support your view that the audio for this course (listed as 10 cassettes on the ERIC website) would not amount to much, most particularly when compared with either the FSI Spanish Basic course or the FSI Spanish Programmatic course. Still, having the audio available would be a welcome addition to those who continue to appreciate these vintage materials.

The FSI FAST courses seem to have been developed at a time when the institute was undergoing changes in its mission, in its funding, in its level of staffing, and in its language-teaching philosophy, which apparently led to the development of these very basic language courses. The courses were delivered in a 3-month period as opposed to a previous 6-month-plus period and they aimed for a much lower level of proficiency, perhaps somewhere in the A2 area, at best.

The exception in the series was the FSI Italian FAST course which contained much more material than the others (printed and recorded) and which, in my view, was more substantial, aiming for a level of proficiency in the B1+ area. Given (a) the unredeemable mess that the institution had made with the FSI Italian Programmatic course (although the FSI had subcontracted the project, as they signed-off on it, they cannot escape their responsibility) and (b) the curious absence of an FSI Italian Basic course, I surmise that the institution’s senior management decided that they would provide something more substantial for this severely neglected language, perhaps in a dying effort as budgets were being slashed. In my view, the FSI Italian FAST course is both under-rated and unfairly tainted by the justifiably poor reputation of the FSI Italian Programmatic course.

Now, back to our regular programming ...

[sfuqua]

I was thinking that Spanish FAST might be good as a quick run through the last month before the trip while I keep plugging through FSI French and Spanish Basic. I won't be anywhere near finished with these monster courses by summer. The French FAST courses have very little audio with them compared to the material in the books; the audios seem to be just the French conversations. For someone shadowing, however, this is fine.

I was thinking of memorizing a phrasebook to help do my final preparation to be an outstanding tourist, but FSI FAST audio seems like it might serve the same purpose.

I'm glad to hear that the Italian FAST course is more substantial, this might make up for the lack of an FSI Basic course, at least a bit.

[Ericounet]

hi,

don't worry .. I'm still alive and still maintaining the website.

I don't spend a lot of time on the forum .. working in real life and working on "something to come" for the website. (and learning Chinese ...)

Doesn't leave any free time.

You can always contact me by email, I answer to every mail.

Best regards

Eric

[Speakeasy]

sfuqua, thank you very much for raising the matter of the audio accompanying the "FSI Spanish FAST" course for discussion. It seems to me that we've done all that we could. As an update to my initial post, here are the results of my searches:

(1) Ericounet confirmed to me via Email that he does not have a copy of the audio files for the "FSI Spanish FAST" course and that he would be pleased to upload them to his FSI-Languages website should anyone ever locate a copy.

(2) None of the online resellers on eBay, or elsewhere, seem to offer the audio portion of the "FSI Spanish FAST" course.

(3) The "Plurality Languages / Foreign Service Institute" website closed down about two years ago. I sent an Email to the former owner of the website offering to purchase a digitized version of the "FSI Spanish FAST" course should he have one in his archives, using the Email address from my last communications with him. Well, a few moments ago, I received an automated message from my service provider advising me that the Email address is no longer valid. So then, this has turned out to be a dead end, after all.

It seems to me that we're done here.

EDITED:
Tinkering.

[hopkins]

The Milwaukee Public Library has an official copy of the course available on its shelf:

Latin American Spanish (fast) course [kit] / [Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State].
National AudioVisual Center | 1983.
Call No. 468.3 F714K

If you are willing to spend a day, it is fairly easy to make a copy at the library. When I was passing through Chicago, I stopped at the Poplar Creek Library for a day (they have several FSI courses) and used a Optimus SCP-32 tape player with a Olympus LS-12 hand recorder to record some of the missing Italian Programmatic course tapes (I got tired and skipped one tape). I created a full response recording and cleaned it up later using Audacity. Eric has them. The compact SCP-32 can be found for a cheap price on Ebay. It's powered off the mains, but all libraries have power outlet in each study carrel. It's hard to find a hand recorder with line-in, so I'd just use a laptop and a USB audio device (e.g. UCA202).

[Cainntear]

The Milwaukee Public Library has an official copy of the course available on its shelf:

Latin American Spanish (fast) course [kit] / [Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State].
National AudioVisual Center | 1983.
Call No. 468.3 F714K

Good spot. If anyone in the area is thinking of digitising this one, I'd like to just reiterate my request for it to be recorded in an uncompressed format or a lossless compression format. I know sites like Ericounet's only make the MP3s available (which is understandable, because bandwidth costs money), but you can easily make an MP3 from an uncompressed file.

Old tape recordings are usually very far from perfect, and it would be nice if people with the necessary skills could clean them up, but you can't really do that if you've only got access to the MP3s, because every time you change it, you end up making the audio worse. Having a high-quality version floating around, even if it's not publicly available on the internet, means that when someone pops up who wants to have a go at removing clicks, pops and hisses, they can be given the files and we might have something better at the end of it.

[Seneca]

I want to note that I have a decent handle on Audacity and am very happy to work to improve audio for random courses. It is nice to feel I am contributing in some way to the community, especially when in between studying anything myself (I have the opposite of wanderlust now and refuse to start a language until I know it is something I have a compelling reason to stick with it a long while How things turned out with Italian was satisfying, and I don't wish to mess with anything else unless I think it has a good chance to be just as great at the end).

Anyway, as an example, for the 40-Lesson European Portuguese Linguaphone, I spent a little time each day over the course of a week or two editing it all out so instead of just a few extremely long tracks, it is now split into 110 total tracks:

Each regular lesson has three tracks now: 1 complete track, 1 with just the dialogue texts, and 1 with just the exercises.
Every 5th lesson is just one track since it is only one thing (either dialogue or text only)
Then there are four total tests;
finally, two fairly lengthy pronunciation tracks. One for Brazilian Portuguese and one for European.

The way this audio comes originally can be quite intimidating to one person just starting off. I know for me it would've been "scary" to try to just make it happen with how it was. This sort of things makes it way easier if I ever do need to interact with it.

The issue with this stuff is, as always, copyright. It is a bit of a bummer. Just to confirm, as far as everyone knows, no Linguaphone course is considered out of copyright to share audio for publicly, right?

For DLI Headstart Portuguese, I also did some editing. I cleaned up all of the audio sections for the sections:
Getting to Know You
Numbers
Time Expressions and Dates
Getting About

I didn't for Extras (A Medical Emergency, Finding a Home, On the Road). But I edited out the extraneous sounds, cleaned up the tape hiss, etc....the audio I have now is substantially improved. Since I am sure this is open/free to share, I am happy to email it to someone to upload on a site if anyone can walk me through how to package what I made in a rar file for easy sending.