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FSI material on ebay

Printed From: FSI Language Courses
Category: Learning Languages
Forum Name: General Discussion
Forum Discription: Discussion about studying languages using the FSI courses. If you would like to see a specific language forum not listed below, just let us know.
URL: http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=257
Printed Date: 16 January 2009 at 3:23am


Topic: FSI material on ebay
Posted By: rgugler
Subject: FSI material on ebay
Date Posted: 01 January 2007 at 5:22pm
Hey all!

I've been browsing ebay for FSI materials and the audio cassettes for Italian volume 1 and 2 showed up. I'm still concentrating on spanish, but I wanted to let any interested know about them! The auction is up in about a day, with no bids. Here is the link. http://cgi.ebay.com/Learn-Italian-Official-Foreign-Service-Institute-Course_W0QQitemZ120068676816QQihZ002QQcategoryZ29792QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - http://cgi.ebay.com/Learn-Italian-Official-Foreign-Service-Institute-Course_W0QQitemZ120068676816QQihZ002QQcategoryZ29792QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Here is a FSI French course
http://cgi.ebay.com/Foreign-Service-Institute-French-24-Cassettes-w-Text_W0QQitemZ130062796987QQihZ003QQcategoryZ3149QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - http://cgi.ebay.com/Foreign-Service-Institute-French-24-Cassettes-w-Text_W0QQitemZ130062796987QQihZ003QQcategoryZ3149QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

FSI German units 1-12 book
http://cgi.ebay.com/Foreign-Service-Institute-French-24-Cassettes-w-Text_W0QQitemZ130062796987QQihZ003QQcategoryZ3149QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - http://cgi.ebay.com/Foreign-Service-Institute-French-24-Cassettes-w-Text_W0QQitemZ130062796987QQihZ003QQcategoryZ3149QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

FSI Japanese 12 cassettes
http://cgi.ebay.com/Japanese-The-Official-Foreign-Service-Institute-Course_W0QQitemZ140068489226QQihZ004QQcategoryZ378QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - http://cgi.ebay.com/Japanese-The-Official-Foreign-Service-Institute-Course_W0QQitemZ140068489226QQihZ004QQcategoryZ378QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Offical-Foreign-Service-Japanese-Language-Course_W0QQitemZ220066311029QQihZ012QQcategoryZ2228QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - http://cgi.ebay.com/Offical-Foreign-Service-Japanese-Language-Course_W0QQitemZ220066311029QQihZ012QQcategoryZ2228QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

These are all the original FSI materials. There are alot of Barrons materials, but I didn't include those.

Hope this helps someone!

Rachel



Replies:
Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 01 January 2007 at 5:46pm

I noticed in some of those pictures that the binders have "Multilingua Inc." while the Italian binder has a little inscription at the bottom "Presented by the American Express Company."

Who is Multilingua Inc. and what does the American Express Company have to do with what are otherwise FSI materials?


Posted By: DemiPuppet
Date Posted: 01 January 2007 at 6:30pm
I can shed light on the latter question.

At a used book sale I found a copy of Italian courses.  Stuck in the pages of one of the books was a form letter from American Express addressed to "Dear Cardholder".  It congratulated the card holder on receiving "the most effective Language Course available".  It was signed by a person in American Express' "Special Offer Center".  I assume AE just repackaged the Italian course and gave it away as a special offer to card holders.

Edit:
Could Multilingua refer to Multilingual Books, the FSI reseller?


Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 01 January 2007 at 7:09pm
Thanks for mentioning the link with American Express. Why didn't the other credit card companies catch on to using FSI courses as promotional gifts/special offers? Tongue
 
I still haven't been able to find anything about Multilingua Inc.


Posted By: Will
Date Posted: 01 January 2007 at 8:32pm
[Edited out information irrelevant to the topic] - Will



Posted By: Sir Nigel
Date Posted: 01 January 2007 at 11:14pm
Just curious, how much do you think the original materials could fetch on eBay? One of these days I'm going to sell off a lot of my courses I've since digitised and have wondered if I'll re-coop my money I bought them for.

-------------
Insurance Excuse:
The accident was due to the road bending.


Posted By: Will
Date Posted: 02 January 2007 at 3:40am
[Edited out information irrelevant to the topic] - Will


Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 02 January 2007 at 9:36am
The only thing to keep in mind is whether the bidders on eBay know about this website. I'm sure that knowing about the free stuff here will keep the bids low on Ebay for FSI materials. I doubt that anyone who knows about this site would want to pay even a penny on eBay for FSI courses that are already here, let alone go whole hog for stuff at NTIS.


Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 03 January 2007 at 1:29pm
Originally posted by Chung

I doubt that anyone who knows about this site would want to pay even a penny on eBay for FSI courses that are already here, let alone go whole hog for stuff at NTIS.


If X is ANY language for which an FSI course exists, the value of physical FSI X course should be much lower than it was before this site was set up, because there's a good chance of the X course getting uploaded in the near future, at which point it's secondhand value drops significantly.

I imagine (& hope) NTIS & resellers sales of FSI courses have dropped dramatically.  And serve them right for continuing to charge prices set at the same level as those charged by publishers that actually have to pay royalties, commission books etc...


Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 03 January 2007 at 2:45pm

On one hand, NTIS does sell other documents from the government, and I'm not sure how much of its revenue comes from sales of FSI courses. It may be a relatively small part since most language learners who like FSI's methods have got by using courses from a library, resellers' courses, or modified courses such as Barron's or Platiquemos.

To boot, I suspect that more people learn languages without FSI. Judging by people who swear by French In Action, Pimsleur, Assimil, Destinos, etc., this not only tells me that many people aren't that keen on FSI, but in spite of the comprehensiveness of FSI courses for "rarer" languages such as Cambodian, Lao or Yoruba, let's be honest, those "rarer" languages aren't the top choices for the casual language learner, whose type makes up the greatest share of the market.
 
On the other hand, I'd be a little concerned if NTIS' sales of FSI stuff go down so much that it'd stop offering the courses for sale at all.
 
That would make things a little more difficult around here since we know that NTIS is a reliable and easy (if not expensive) source for new material for gdfellows. As a worst-case, someone who would want to provide a course for a somewhat more exotic language such as Fula or Lao could at least bite the bullet and get it from NTIS and then digitalize for the website.
 
 
 
 


Posted By: Walshy
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 4:26am
Check out this DLI Russian stuff.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220069414938&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1#ebayphotohosting - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220069414938&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1#ebayphotohosting


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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain. - Adlai Stevenson


Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 6:02am
Re the Russian stuff, there's only 7 CDs.  Unless they're MP3s, sounds like a lot of the audio is missing...


Posted By: smoen
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 9:37am
Assuming that the entire audio is actually there, and that the course is original material, is this something that would be beneficial to this group?

SteveM


Posted By: smoen
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 9:52am
I have sent an e-mail to the ebay seller, asking about the quantity of audio included. By the description, which says that there is audio for each module, i would assume that there would be a minimum of 50 hours of so of audio (assuming 1 hr per module, similar to other courses). We'll see what the seller has to say.

I guess the big questions is (are)

1) Would this be a better purchase for me that completing the Hungarian and Korean courses, as I planned?  This may be a once-in-a-long-time deal
2) Would gdfellows allow the posting of this course? From the photos, it seems obvious to me that this is material from a student who attended the course. It is an original government course.

Scanning these documents would be a massive undertaking, while the audio, if already in mp3, would take little or no work.

Smoen


Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 10:08am
The only thing to watch for is that DLI courses are distinct from FSI courses even though DLI is ultimately part of the federal government (and SHOULD mean that its publications are exempt from copyright protection.)
 
Here's a link to some discussion about DLI courses (scroll towards the bottom of the first page):
 
http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=256&KW=dli&PID=1016#1016 - http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=256&KW=dli&PID=1016#1016
 
The eligibility of DLI courses as public-domain seems a little unclear, unfortunately.


Posted By: smoen
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 4:58pm
I contacted the seller on e-bay, and the audio files ARE mp3. The homework audio is a bit over 7 hours (sounds about right).

In any case, I have put in a bid for the course. If I win the course, and it is appropriate for this site, I will contact gdfellows and work it out from there.

SMoen


Posted By: Sir Nigel
Date Posted: 15 January 2007 at 8:35pm
Ooooh! If you would post that here it would be awesome (technicalities of posting a DLI course considered of course). :O

-------------
Insurance Excuse:
The accident was due to the road bending.



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