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| Testimonials |
"This way of learning a language made complete sense to me. Working with the SpeakEZ German course, I was able to understand more in 2 weeks than in five years of German in school!"
-- Asbjørn Finsnes
"The way in which this method is presented provided me with language that will suit me in a foreign country instead of a collection of unusable vocabulary words.
Those who have studied languages realize that looking-up individual words cannot convey a language in the correct manner. Becoming fluent means being able to verbalize ideas ; not learning technical rules and identifying the Past Predicate Indicative.
The audio part of this method has been my favorite portion of the learning process. Not only is the pronunciation slow and clear, but it is presented so that I remember the flow of sentences and concepts.
Thank you for the opportunity to work with this amazing program; it has been a blessing for me."
-- Destiny Yarbro, College Student
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A Gift For You From The Foreign Service Institute
by Nathalie Fairbanks
After visiting the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Virginia a few years back, I was interested in finding out how diplomats learned languages. Imagine my surprise when I found the original FSI courses online -- they're in the public domain now and accessible to anyone!
Click here to find the FSI course for your language.
Bear in mind that these courses were written in the 60s and 70s for foreign service officers, so some of the vocabulary is a little dated and specific to diplomatic circles. For the German course, I found that this applied only to a small percentage of the vocabulary--nothing to worry about. The German sentence structure hasn't changed!
The FSI courses are meant to be taught by a native speaker, so I'll outline how you can get mileage out of this amazing resource in self-study. Specifically, I rated the course structure on a scale from 1 to 10 on how well you can apply the 5 SpeakEZ Steps.
If you need a refresher on the SpeakEZ Steps, go to www.SpeakEZLanguages.com and download the report. It explains each of the steps in detail and it's free!
Step 0: Read a good translation of the lesson text in English. (10 pts.)
All of the courses I checked out have an English translation of the lesson texts.
Step 1: Decoding (Word by word translation into English). (7 pts.)
Decoding helps you to intuitively understand the structure of the language and to recognize patterns, without someone throwing grammar rules at you. It is in my opinion much more effective when you can figure out patterns by yourself, instead of being told what they are.
Since this is not always possible, a grammar explanation after the fact helps to clear up questions. Decoding is like playing a detective game. It's fun and a great exercise to help you get a "feel" for the language.
If you are about to decode, more than half the work has been done for you in the FSI course, as every word is listed and translated before it is used in a sentence. They even give you the conjugated verb forms, which saves you a lot of headaches!
This example is from Lesson 5 of the Basic German course, page 110. I added a few words that had been covered in previous lessons:
the newspaper - die Zeitung
came, did come - ist ... gekommen
today - heute
not - nicht
My paper didn't come today. Meine Zeitung ist heute nicht gekommen.
All you need to do to decode is this:
Meine Zeitung ist heute nicht gekommen.
My Paper is today not come.
Easy!
Step 2: Active Listening (Listening to the German word while reading the English word) (5 pts.)
What you really need for starting Active Listening is a recording of each dialog where every word is pronounced separately while the native phrase melody is kept intact.
Although the speakers do pronounce each new word slowly for you, they omit the native sing-song. Also, when they get to the whole sentences, they speak pretty fast, which is hard to follow as a beginner. If you like to dive head first, go for it. I would recommend these recordings for more advanced students to practice Active Listening.
Step 3: Passive Listening (Playing the recording of the lesson text for hours while you concentrate on something else) (2 pts.)
Unless you isolate a whole dialog as a separate mp3 file to set it on auto-repeat, you won't be able to practice true Passive Listening with this course.
Step 4: Integration (Practice exercises that solidify your knowledge) (10+ pts.)
This is the strength of these courses. They give you tape after tape of pattern drills, pronunciation drills and translation drills. Teachers don't usually have the time to spend on drills in class. These exercises are fundamental as they will help you master the spoken language in the end.
Use the tapes--they are worth their weight in gold!
So much for the FSI German course. The French and Spanish courses have a very similar structure. I loved the differentiation drills in the Spanish course. If you need to polish your Spanish pronunciation, this is a treasure trove!
As for the other languages, I checked out the Chinese and Arabic courses. The emphasis being on oral communication, the script is romanized, so you don't need to learn to read first (a big plus). Unfortunately, there are no recordings for the Russian course.
Check out what's available for your language here: http://fsi-language-courses.net.
Happy language learning!
© 2007 Nathalie V. Fairbanks
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEBSITE? You may, as long as you include this blurb with it: SpeakEZ Languages publishes "Language Learning Express", a free bi-weekly e-zine for language learners who are eager to discover the secrets of efficient language learning, transition seamlessly into a new culture and have fun on the way. Get your FREE subscription and your FREE e-book now at http://www.SpeakEZLanguages.com.
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