Platiquemos Changes to FSI Basic Course
to Facilitate Self-study

As anybody who has tried to use the original FSI Basic Course in Spanish (Hereafter referred to as FSIBC) (or the knock-offs sold by Barrons, AudioForum and others) will know, neither the format nor the content lend themselves to self-study.

There are two reasons for this.  First, the FSIBC was developed to be taught at the Foreign Service Institute in a classroom situation, not as a self-study course.  Second, when the course was first released (1957) the only method of using audio was in a language laboratory, which meant that having the text before you was pretty easy.  [Even having the text before you wasn't always that helpful, since much of it was in an arcane phonetic alphabet, totally unnecessary for a language as phonetic as Spanish, but confusing.]  Following is a partial list of what we've done to make Platiquemos "user-friendly" for self-study.  

1)  We've completely reformatted and re-typed the text, not only to do away with the intrusive and useless phonetic alphabet, but to make it easier to read (see our sample of Barrons Unit 3 to see what the original looked like).

2) We've added about 500 period illustrations, not only for visual relief but to introduce historical and cultural matters to our students.  Samples of these illustrations can be seen on any of the pages of the Course Content section.

3) We've done away with the useless and complicated phonetic alphabet (in the original, some of the Spanish and all of the glossaries were in the phonetic alphabet only).  While a phonetic alphabet is indispensable for a language like Chinese, it is totally unnecessary for a highly phonetic (in the Roman alphabet) like Spanish.

4)  The original FSIBC (and its knockoffs) contained a lot of cues in the text both in English and Spanish that weren't in the audio.  We've added these cues to the audio to make it more useful in a 21st century environment (in a car, using i-pod, etc.)  We've added these cues, both in Spanish and English where appropriate to make "hands-off" learning practical.  For example, the "Conversation Stimulus" exercises in the original were only a quick run-through in Spanish in the audio, although there were many parts (narrative, prompts) which were used in classes but couldn't be used by self-studiers.  We've added all of this, so that the "Conversation Stimuli" can be a valuable part of a self-learners experience and not just an exercise in listening.

Finally because we believe that an exposure to different accents and voices is important. we've more than quadrupled the voices in Platiquemos as compared to the FSIBC.  Some of this re-recording was to make the recording fit with the re-written text; other parts were to either include more female voices (lacking in the original), or to improve the sound quality of the original.

To sum up, we've tried to make the Program as useful as possible for self-learners--although it is still totally appropriate for classroom use.  I look forward to receiving suggestions from some of you as to what more we might do--and you can be sure suggestions from our students are taken very seriously.

Ongoing Improvements.

In addition to the translations of the Readings, adding a section of suggested responses to the questions about the readings. This was originally the instructor's job, but Platiquemos is primarily for self-studiers.

Re-recording some of the audio that was preserved from the original, and isn´t of the quality we'd like.

Illustrating Español Rápido with some appropriate authentic illustrations.

These improvements will take some time, but I'm working on it. Please don't shoot the piano player--he's playing as fast as he can!

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