FSI Chinese End Level Profficiency

[Andre R]

Hey guys;

 

It's been a while since I posted. Since then, I've finished all of Pimsleur Mandarin and did some additional begginer studying and I feel like I've made some good progress.

I feel like I'm at a point where I can survive any situation, have basic conversations, go into shops and restaurants and only (or mostly) speak Mandarin, etc.

I've since started dating a chinese girl and enjoy the fact that we can even have basic conversations during day to day life.. It's especially useful in public situations!

 

Now I'd like to take my Mandarin more to a Upper Begginer level, maybe even Low Intermediate.

 

Has any of you gone through the entire FSI Mandarin course? I just skimmed through the "Criterion Tests" and "Revision Tapes", starting from the hardest (Module 9) and going down, and I think I am right around Module 4 or 5...

 

What kind of profficiency do think can be expected at the end of the course?

 

PS: Sorry for any typos, it's been a while since I've used written English and I can't set my computer's autocorrect to English...

 

Thanks!

[Andre R]

I'm actually surprised to see no feedback, I though FSI was really popular!

 

If anyone is interested in checking it out, here's the link: http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Chinese

[Altair]

I did a little of this course a long while ago. I thought the method was very good; however, the dialog at the higher levels is somewhat focused on language important to making small talk in embassy circles. Also, it is quite old and so has no vocabulary about thing like I the Internet and cell phones.

[yukifu]

Hi Andre,

 

I've worked through many of the FSI lessons and, although it is a good course in some ways (the dialogues are relatively realistic from the beginning), the vocabulary is dated and specialized. The course was produced in the early 80s(?) and a lot has changed in China since then. I've never worked in an embassy, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of that language is dated, too.

 

As an alternative, I recommend working through the NPCR series. It is similarly dialogue-based, if that's what attracted you to the FSI course. Although NCPR has a lot of university-related vocabulary (the dialogues largely involve foreign exchange students living in China), you get passed that stuff pretty quickly. The second book is high beginner-level, so you might be ok starting there. Not sure where you live, but you can find cheap used copies on Amazon in the states. You can find corresponding Memrise or Anki decks for free. 

 

Since the FSI course is free, you also may have been attracted to it because of the cost. If you can't afford to pay anything, you might consider a combination of podcasts (Chinesepod, Popup Chinese), Anki/Memrise decks, and TV/movies (via YouTube, Viki, etc. if you don't have access to Chinese TV). You could also participate in a language exchange via iTalki or similar. It's a little more hacked together, but potentially more useful if you aren't working in an embassy in Beijing in 1980. ;)

[sima]

Hey Andre

 

I finished the entire course a few months ago (after having finished Pimsleur as well). You can see my old post about it to get an idea

 

I would recommend starting from at least Module 2, since Pimsleur gives you no grammar at all and some of the things won't really make sense initially. Alternatively, you can probably just read the coursebooks till you reach a point where you want to start.

[Andre R]

A little update: About to finish Module 6 now, starting Module 7 now.

 

Honestly, even though modules 7-9 seemed very advanced before picking them up, I now realize... They are still at a very basic level, but I still can't follow most of TV shows (image and context help me figure a lot of things out, but I don't actually "understand" things), and my conversations are still at a very basic level..

 

I guess I'll need around 2 full years of study before I can follow TV shows and have more substantial conversations

[James3]

 

Since then, I've finished all of Pimsleur Mandarin

 

Out of curiosity, do you mean Mandarin I, II, III, and IV?

[Andre R]

Pimsleur I-III, I couldn't get my hands on IV but from what I've heard it builds very little on III and I didn't miss much

[hedwards]

You might consider doing what I'm doing, basically QQ with native speakers. I handle it like a language and culture exchange where I get to practice my Chinese and they get to ask questions about America and English.

 

One of the downsides to Pimsleur is that IMHO, it's overly focused on speech. Which is fine if you just want to speak Chinese, but it means that you're cut off from the part of Chinese society that's written. So no chatrooms and QQ only with the voice option.

 

I'm personally finding that my insecurities have largely been overblown. There's still plenty of gaps in my knowledge, but with another person on the other end trying to understand me, I can focus a bit more on getting comfortable taking the vocab and grammar that I know and working on my improvisational skills.

 

From the looks of your post, you're really at the point where you want to be expanding what you can say and probably learning how to read and write. Which isn't mandatory, but if you can already have conversations that's sort of the next step.

[Andre R]

Update time!

Just got to Module 7 today. And wow, the difficulty jump from Module 6 to 7 is very noticeable. From only a few words per tape to over 20 unique words in a single tape, and the final dialogue was finally at full native speed, no more babying around.

Looking back at when I started this thread, looks like I've taken a long time to get to Module 7... But I guess I just can't learn too fast, I just end up forgetting vocabulary.

 

Regarding people to talk with... well, my girlfriend is chinese, but she's from Macau. Her Mandarin not being the best aside, she doesn't really like speaking Mandarin and sticks to very basic things. She keeps on telling me to learn Cantonese and has taken the habit of speaking to me in Cantonese to force me to start understanding it, aha.

I would actually like to learn it someday, but now I can't do both Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time.

Sometimes I get to interact with people from the Mainland, and I feel like I learn a lot of words even in just an hour or two, so it's nice when that happens.

But on a daily basis, I only interact with people from Macau.

[TheBigZaboon]

 OP, I'm sorry I never replied to your requests for info on the FSI course before. When your requests appeared I had all kinds of excuses as to why I didn't help, but you can put it down to selfishness, pure and simple. As I can see that you didn't lose faith, and continued to use what I have always considered one of the best courses out there in its time, I hope I can give you some relevant information that makes up for my previous laziness.

 

First, (and way overdue) as to level, the FSI course was the basic core material for an in-house approach to an immersion for Chinese as practiced by the US Foreign Service for all of their language courses. As such, it seems it was designed to cover in one year all basic grammar necessary for people who would then have a nearly private follow-up one year course in China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong to finish their formal studies. After that, it was "off to work you go." If you use all of the main modules and all of the supplementary modules, you will have a complete basic grounding in modern Chinese, equivalent to that you get with any other course.

 

As you seem to have already discovered, there are differences in the the approach used in different parts of the course. The first modules, up to Arranging a meeting, use a very structured teaching style that was the hallmark of this course: recorded explanations, practice included in the audio, and extensive use of drills. After it became available outside the small circle of universities that helped design and test it, and the government agencies that used it, this methodology, revolutionary at the time, rather than the content of the course became the standard by which it was judged. The methodology was controversial, and hasn't found a lot of acceptance since, with the exception of an important text I will discuss below. In addition to using a controversial methodology, in time, the content of the cultural and social situations used to illustrate the grammar points became dated as China went through the changes that resulted in the society we see on the mainland today. But the grammar included and explained is as relevant today as it was then.

 

The second, more advanced half of the course, moves away from some of the tight structure in the first half, providing more listening practice, because at his point the intended students were getting plenty of conversation practice among themselves in a very small, very highly structured teaching environment. What they needed then was a wider approach to the society they were going to be expected to function in. That's where the modules from Society took on the characteristics of a more listening-oriented approach. After using the materials in these modules, the vocabulary and situations were used as the basis for the conversation practice provided in a six-hour a day classroom environment.

 

Let me point out here, before I forget, that you should not just use the main modules and feel you've finished the course. The supplementary modules provide some very specific practice in situations that can easily be adapted to life in any of the Chinese-speaking countries or environments you may be likely to visit. Customs Surrounding Marriage, Birth, and Death may not be as dated as they seem if you are able to consider locations other than the mainland as your target environment. The obvious importance of food and hospitality in Chinese social and business life will require a serious look at the Restaurant module. The Post Office module speaks for itself. Each of these modules also contain invaluable little snippets of  grammar or sentence patterns that may not be fully explained in the main textbooks. 

 

At this point, I want to address the criticisms often aimed at both this course and the DeFrancis course, often looked down upon because there are no cell phone, computer, or social networking vocabulary or situations included. My own opinion is that you can't avoid picking up this stuff on your own, it's nice to have, but you can't avoid it even if you wanted to. On the other hand, the visit to the Ming Tombs or the visit to communes now only of historical interest covered extensively in this course effectively mirror the factory visits and inspections anyone working in business in China can expect to face often enough to make this a valid and worthwhile use of your study time. If you substitute the vocabulary of your industry (manufacturing, IT data centers, back office operations, etc.), formal visits are they same everywhere. I am not really a student, and I found information on how to make an appointment, get my car (or anything else) fixed, or arrange a formal dinner worth its weight in gold to me. Your mileage and type of smalltalk may vary considerably. How out-of-date this course really is seems, at least to me, to be based on how flexible you are. 

 

Finally, as promised I want to bring your attention to a series of textbooks that preserves the best of the FSI methodology (drills, drills, drills, varied situations in various Chinese-speaking environments, and hours and hours (and hours) of high quality recorded materials), and addresses what I always thought was the only serious drawback to the FSI course: the lack of written materials in either simplified or traditional characters. The course I'm referring to is written by Cornelius Kubler and his collaborators, is published by Tuttle, and is comprised of various texts entitled Basic (or Intermediate) Spoken Chinese and Basic (or Intermediate) Written Chinese. The texts are accompanied not only by audio, but by video, as well.  The text books also have separate supplementary volumes entitled Practice Essentials which provide tens of hours more audio and practice materials, some in pdf form. This series provides extensive materials set in all of the major Chinese speaking environments you are likely to encounter in one lifetime: the mainland, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and even Hong Kong and Macao. It builds on the FSI methodology, and brings it all up to date. Reading Dr. Kubler's resume and guesstimating his age, I suspect he was involved in the use of original FSI course, and probably its development, too. I can't do justice to it here, but I hope to be able to do a more extensive review of this spectacular series in the near future. 

 

I think that's enough for now.

[Andre R]

Hey Zaboon!

Thanks for your post, it was very helpful and constructive. And no need to apologize for not posting in the past!

[Andre R]

Doing Module 8 now. I think I've been advancing through the units at a relatively slow rate, but I also think this isn't necessarily bad. This way I can use the vocabulary in daily life and not only have better vocabulary retention but feel more comfortable using it.

 

Regarding Module 8... Yet again a spike in difficulty compared to Module 7.

I'm feeling very eager to complete the course, after Module 8 there's only Module 9 left. I think that after I complete everything I should make a little recording for you guys!