Review of Foreign Service Institute Standard Chinese A Modular Approach

[sima]

Hi everyone

 

Having just recently completed the Foreign Service Institute’s (FSI) Standard Chinese: A Modular Approach, I thought I’d give this course a detailed review for the benefit of future students

 

You can find it online here

 

Background

 

Before starting this course, I had already completed Michael Thomas Mandarin Chinese (all the way to Vocabulary) and Pimsleur Mandarin Phases 1-3 (I know Phase 4 has recently been released but I don’t plan on doing it since it probably won’t add much). With that, I had a fairly good head-start in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary

 

As a side note, the Michel Thomas Method probably has the one with the best outcome for time spent. I would definitely recommend it as a starting point for anyone interested is studying Mandarin.

 

Timeline

 

In total, it took me a year and 2 months to complete this course. This is because I am full-time student and could only dedicate about 1 hour per day to it. There weren't any major breaks in my study except some downtime every now and then. You can probably finish this course in 3-4 months with more intensive study.

 

Content and Difficulty

 

It begins assuming that you have zero knowledge of Mandarin. I was actually quite surprised by the pace at which FSI goes, it really doesn’t have any dumbing down that you expect from other introductory materials. From the very first lesson, you are exposed to near-normal pace of speech.

 

The content is actually fairly straight-forward and the accompanying texts are one of the best resources I’ve come across so far, consisting mainly of explanatory notes regarding the vocabulary and grammar, with plentiful use of example sentences. The cultural notes become slightly more frequent as you progress.

 

A lot of people seem to be concerned that the content is out-dated. This is not really the case for the bulk of metarial, and whatever little part of it is out-dated is usually easy to identify, and is far out-weighted by rest of the material. The grammar and phonology are essentially the same as these days, and the vocabulary is not so much out-dated as much as it is not up to date, i.e. you won’t learn the words for mobile, computer, internet etc. What you need to keep in mind, however, is that the content was designed for U.S. diplomats and Foreign Service Officers, so the target sentences you learn (especially initially) may not be relevant to everyday civilian life. Don’t let this discourage you, as the other stuff you learn is very much relevant and useful

 

The quality of the audio recordings is admittedly not the best, but I didn’t have any trouble understanding what was being said except for very few short-lived segments where the audio quality wasn’t preserved well (I assume at some point they were converted from tape recordings to digital MP3).

 

Modules  1-6

 

These will take you from zero knowledge to somewhere around advanced beginner. Each module has between 6 to 8 units, and each unit is broken down into 5 recordings.

 

The first recording is the C1 (comprehension) tape, which introduces the sentences and vocabulary for the unit. These last between 20-30 minutes, and by the end of it you are expected to be able to understand the sentences (i.e. when prompted in Chinese, you will be able to give the English translation). Each unit introduces around 15-20 new words

 

The second recording is the P1 (production) tape, in which you review the sentences of the C1 tape but this time the focus is entirely on production of the sentences (i.e. saying them out loud). By the end of this tape, you are expected to be able to produce all the target sentences in Chinese when prompted with in English

 

The C2 and P2 tapes are various exercises where you practice what you’ve learned.  Although they don’t introduce much new material, they are a vital part of consolidating and applying what you’ve already learnt. C2 focuses on comprehension exercises while P2 on production exercises. They are also really helpful in gaining non-language related knowledge, such as common Chinese names and different Chinese cities

 

The D1 (drill) tapes consist of a series of drills relating to what you’ve learnt. This is quite the classic style of language instruction where you repeat after the instructor and change an element of the sentence. Though some people don’t like this and regard it as old-fashioned, I contest; this was probably the element that allowed me to instantaneously understand Chinese words rather than have to translate them in my head. For serious language learners, you will find these to be rather helpful

 

The student texts and workbooks are an excellent resource in general, and they are indispensible when doing this course. They contain the target sentences, vocabulary, explanatory notes, as well as the exercises you will do in the C2 and P2 tapes, and the drills with the correct responses.

 

Modules 7-9

 

There is a step up in the level of difficulty when you reach Module 7. The C1 and P1 tapes are now Tape 1, while C2 and P2 are Tape 2. There are no drill tapes anymore. The number of new words introduced per unit is about 30-35, and the conversational speed of the final dialogues becomes at native speed. The workbooks are about double to triple the amount of detail per target sentence.

 

Unfortunately, Module 9 has no accompanying workbook as it was never developed. While going through this module, I wrote down all the target sentences along with the Chinese translation, and you can find them here

 

Resource and Optional Modules

 

There is one Resource Module which contains four different sections: Pronunciation and Romanization (i.e. Pinyin), Numbers, Times and Dates, and Classroom Expressions. Needless to say, the first three sections are essential for any basic understanding of Chinese, while the fourth one is there for people who actually attended this course in the classroom. It’s interesting but nothing special.

 

The first three sections can actually be used by anyone interested in studying that specific material, even if they don’t want to do the main course. They’re  quite comprehensive and can be regarded as a one stop shop for those parts of your foundation knowledge.

 

The six Optional Modules are entitled Car, Hotel, Restaurant, Post Office and Telephone, Personal Welfare, and Marriage, Birth and Death. They’re designed so that you can do them independently of the main modules, but in reality each one is at a certain level such that it would be best to have reached a specific part of the main course before attempting them. They are mainly useful for vocabulary, although they also reinforce certain grammatical points introduced in the main modules

 

Advantages

 

Comprehensiveness

 

Starting with zero knowledge, you can expect to reach an intermediate stage by the time you finish. Having looked through the current HSK levels, I can say that I know 80% of the Level 3 vocabulary and could probably sit and pass this with a week of moderate preparation (just to cover the things that were missed). That’s not to say that the course falls short of HSK3; instead, the stuff that you learn is just very general, and you will know a lot of things which are beyond the scope of HSK3. In fact, looking through the HSK4 vocabulary list, I already know 30-40% of it, with the remainder split between words for which I recognise one character but not the other, and words which are completely new.

 

I think the only other course available online which is slightly more extensive is the Defence Language Institute (DLI) Chinese Basic Course. Although the content of these two is extremely similar, the main difference is that it also teaches reading and writing.

 

Price

 

It’s free.

 

Standard of teaching

 

You are treated as a serious learner. There is no dumbing down of the content. The goals are realistic and they do not claim that you will reach an ‘Advanced’ stage after 50 hours of study. In fact, it was the FSI who developed the famous categories of language difficulty, rating Mandarin Chinese under “Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours) - Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers”. The timeframe refers to the average duration of study required before reaching what they refer to as General Professional Proficiency in Speaking and General Professional Proficiency in Reading

 

Further, the language you are taught is not strictly formal. In fact, they are quite clear about how and when you should use formal language and the instruction in this regard was done quite well in my opinion. It is fortunate for the learner that Mandarin is not like Japanese and Korean in having a whole different set of linguistic style when it comes to formal and casual speech; so far I’ve found that in Mandarin it is mostly about replacing a few words for more formal counterparts

 

Disadvantages

 

Age

 

The course was developed around 1973, and the content is oriented to that time era. As I’ve mentioned above, part of what you are taught is out-dated or out of use, but given the nature of the language, it turns out that this part is still helpful, in that the individual components of the words, or the pattern of the words themselves, can be used elsewhere. Naturally, technology and household items that was not available at the time will not be introduced

 

Another thing you’ll notice is that the quality of the audio recordings can sometimes vary. Overall, everything was intelligible despite the constant white-noise in the background. In practice, however, I found it to be a more realistic representation of what you’ll deal with in real life, as native speakers don’t always speak with the clarity that we’ve become used to with introductory audio teaching material.

 

Target audience

 

The course was developed for U.S. diplomats in the political environment of the 1970s, so it’s not exactly directed at the general public. You’ll learn how to say colonel, ambassador, embassy, consulate, Department of American and Oceanic Affairs (not sure if this even exists anymore) earlier than you might need. The target sentences can also be quite humorous. In the long run though, the rest of the content is very much relevant to everyone

 

Reading and writing

 

The course is entirely in Pinyin. Whether you regard this as a positive or a negative is up to you to decide, but I think that beyond the beginner level, learning the characters is a great aid to learning the language and should be a requirement for any serious learner. The DLI Chinese Basic Course (here)is extremely similar to the FSI Standard Chinese course and the former does in fact teach the Hanzi alongside the modules.

 

There is also a separate book aimed specifically at the reading and writing aspect of the DLI course. This book covers 500 of the basic characters which you will encounter and it is a pretty solid resource which I highly recommend (although in my experience, the amount of writing practice given to each character is far to little) Here are the links:

 

Vol 1, Vol 2

 

Mode of instruction

 

Personally, I had no trouble completing this and I would always look forward to the next lesson, but if you’re more into interactive, audio-visual, modern and fun ways of learning, I’m afraid that the sheer length and style of the course can test your patience, regardless of how passionate you are about learning a foreign language

 

Where to afterwards

 

The truth is, I’m not sure where to go from here on. Having relied on this course for slightly more than a year now, I’m a bit anxious about the next step. I will have a look at the DLI course as I recall that the last few modules went beyond the scope of FSI (FSI initially had plans for a Module 10, but this was never completed).

 

I’ve begun watching this show which is aimed at Chinese language learners. It seems that my biggest weakness now is listening comprehension, as I really can’t seem to decipher a lot of what they are saying, but when I read the Chinese subtitles, I understand a big chunk of it.

 

I will look into the ChinesePod intermediate lessons, but I really don’t like the lack of linear, consistent flow of their lessons.

 

For listening and reading, I’m currently going through this graded reader. The audio quality is exceptionally clear but the pace of the narrator is slowed down quite a bit

 

TL;DR 8.5/10

[abcdefg]

Thanks for that careful and comprehensive review.

 

I’ve begun watching

show which is aimed at Chinese language learners.

 

 

Those videos look pretty challenging and the ones I previewed involve lots of colloquial speech.

[sima]

I've found that the script is fairly understandable and reflects a lot of what I've learnt from the FSI course. They sometimes use 儿化　quite liberally though. Overall I think the main advantage of the show is that it revolves around the everyday life of an average family, so you get a lot of exposure to daily situations, rather than the drama, romance and crime series which I've started and very quickly stopped.

 

I wonder whether the show is actually intended for speakers of regional dialects so that they become more famililar with 普通话 rather than for 学汉语的老外. I used to watch Dora the Explorer before this, it was nice and basic but I wasn't interested in so many animal names

[simc]

If you are interested in the old FSI or DLI courses you would probably want to read about the method behind them, the Audiolingual Method:

 

http://recursos.udgvirtual.udg.mx/biblioteca/bitstream/123456789/1435/1/the_audiolingual_method.pdf

 

This explains the theory behind the method and why it fell from grace during the 1970s.

[MPhillips]

Re Sima's original post: of course times have changed but pre-1949 spoken Mandarin had a decent stock of polite language, both honorific & humble, although of course not as elaborate as what we find in Japanese. When I was a kid I bought a Teach YS Chinese book (printed in the 70's but probably written in the 40's) which contained dialogues replete with those terms. I wish I hadn't lost it--it was charming. Sadly by the time I got the chance to try them out, in the 80's, most had died out(in speech anyway)--even in Taiwan.

[tysond]

Years ago I did some lessons in Malaysia and my teacher decided since I was working at a fairly senior level, we'd use a text that focused more on embassies and government and business scenarios, as opposed to the student oriented vocab that my already purchased textbooks had.

 

It was actually quite a good decision and I still use quite a few of the phrases and terms from that course -- they have not yet come up in my more recent textbooks (which are usually ongoing discussions about life and times of overseas students).

[abcdefg]

If you are interested in the old FSI or DLI courses you would probably want to read about the method behind them, the Audiolingual Method:

 

http://recursos.udgv...gual_method.pdf

 

This explains the theory behind the method and why it fell from grace during the 1970s.

 

 

That was an interesting discussion of the Audio-Lingual method. Do you think Pimsleur would fall into that camp?

[abcdefg]

Years ago I did some lessons in Malaysia and my teacher decided since I was working at a fairly senior level, we'd use a text that focused more on embassies and government and business scenarios, as opposed to the student oriented vocab that my already purchased textbooks had.

 

Good decision, as you found out.

 

I got so very tired of the heavy emphasis on "college-student-focused" vocabulary in several low-level text books. I really didn't want to know how to say "What's your major?" and "Where is your dorm?" in half a dozen different ways. It was a major stumbling block. I had no use for that stuff.

 

May have been good in the end, since it forced me into the habit of relying heavily on tutors and language exchange instead of just resigning myself to what was served up in class.

[SiMaKe]

I agree with both Tysond's and abcdefg's sentiment about school-centered-vocabulary. With more and more of us Baby Boomers studying Chinese, we need more dialogues about where to buy Depends, hearing-aid battery sizes, having cataract surgery, where did I leave my pills, and who was that lady I just saw downstairs in the sitting room – my wife! Who? J

[abcdefg]

It's not really quite that bad, but "where did I leave my pills?" does have a familiar ring to it.

[renzhe]

I’ve begun watching this show which is aimed at Chinese language learners.

That looks great! Thanks for mentioning it.

[michaelS]

Drills.... Really long drills!

 

I think drills are a really good way to learn language, a little step up in terms of cognitive challenge from repetition. I've listened to the first two, which are predictably basic, but also nice and quick and showing a bit of flexibility, which is the important thing with drills that are reinforcing grammar points or vocab usage.

 

I'd seen this course before, but guess I didn't check out a 'D' tape - thank you very much for the review, sima, otherwise I'd have missed out. I've been looking for drills in Chinese for ages.

 

I'm going to work through the unit using the drills only, will report back when that's done (which may be a while, there is a huge amount of content here)

[sima]

If you are interested in the old FSI or DLI courses you would probably want to read about the method behind them, the Audiolingual Method:

 

http://recursos.udgv...gual_method.pdf

 

This explains the theory behind the method and why it fell from grace during the 1970s.

 

Interesting read, thanks for that. I recognise that some techniques are better than others, but I'm of the opinion that success rests more with the student than it does with the method being used. Combine the two in a great way and excellent results ensue (as the article suggests in the first part). Personally, from my limited experience with the new methods of language teaching, I find them to be less rigirous and celebrate small achievements unnecessarily, as well as boasting too much (with our technique, you'll be speaking in x number of days effortlessly!)

 

 

That was an interesting discussion of the Audio-Lingual method. Do you think Pimsleur would fall into that camp?

 

Probably. Although the program goes on about how Paul Pimsleur developed this remarkable new technique, going through 45 hours of 'Listen and repeat' and 'How do you say' didn't strike me as innovative. The idea that you will passively pick up the grammar patterns and such is not one I subscribe to. As far as I remember, they never even explained the tones, instead hoping that you would notice, and often repeating 'Listen carefully' etc