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 FSI Language Courses Forum : Learning Languages : General Discussion
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Tora
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Quote Tora Replybullet Topic: Use of courses at FSI
    Posted: 28 October 2007 at 12:34am

Hi,

I'm wondering how these courses were used at the Foreign Service Institute. Did Diplomats study languages full time or part time mixed in with other courses / duties etc ?

How quickly did they study the material. For example a course like spanish basic has 4 volumes each with 9(?) units - how quickly did they cover this material? Did they do 1 unit per day ? Or did they spend several study sessions covering each unit.

Also what happened once they had completed the "basic" course? What material did they study then? Was there a spanish intermediate? Or did they start studying other commercially sourced materials? Or were they then on their own?
 
Most of the courses are dated back in the 1960s, are the courses still used? Have they been updated since then? Or have completely new courses been developed?
 
I'm quite interested in this kind of background information regarding the courses. Thanks for any information you can provide.


Edited by Tora - 28 October 2007 at 12:35am
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Rina
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Quote Rina Replybullet Posted: 03 November 2007 at 9:26pm
I wish I remember where I saw it but it seems that the govt. now uses a very different course... Not a diplomat myself so I have no idea if it's true or not. It does make you wonder, no? I'm taking the mandarin course and sometimes I wonder if the people who developed these courses or recorded them are still alive and what they think of the fact that  now so many civilians benefit from them.
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mspxlation
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Quote mspxlation Replybullet Posted: 29 November 2007 at 1:45am
I believe that the FSI was a full-time assignment. Languages were classified on the basis of how long it took a full-time student (6-8 hours per day) to reach Level 3 ("professional competence"). The easier languages, such as Spanish, took 3 months, while the hardest languages, such as Japanese and Arabic, took 2 years, with the second year of study being in the host country.

The manuals that are immortalized on this site were not the only texts used. Somewhere I have typewritten copies of a couple of supplementary modules that were used after the standard Japanese course.

There may have been supplementary materials for Spanish, too, or else the diplomats were expected to study on their own or with tutors after being posted to a Spanish-speaking country.
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