Foreign Service Institute Language Courses

The foreign language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute have helped thousands of individuals from diverse backgrounds or interests including diplomatic, military, business, travel, and cultural concerns.

The institute was founded on March 13, 1947, in compliance with the Foreign Service Act of 1946 passed by Congress. The Director of the Foreign Service Institute is equivalent in rank to an Assistant Secretary of State, and is appointed by the current Secretary of State.

The institute designed and taught language courses to assist diplomats sent to overseas posts. Learning materials developed by the FSI are considered government publications

Many of these programs were originally developed by self instructional programs were originally produced by the National Foreign Affairs Training Center of the U.S. Department of State, the Defense Language Institute, the Center for the Advancement of Language Learning, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Basic Courses generally focus on the all essential grammar of a spoken language. These courses include samples of speech, explanations of basic language structure, and a wide range of practical exercises.

FAST (Familiarization and Short-Term Training) and HeadStart courses are designed to familiarize the student with everyday situations visitors will encounter and provide the needed language skills to handle common every day situations.

Programmatic Courses offer more extensive grammar and sentence structure while providing extensive reading comprehensive drills, vocabulary training, and pronunciation.

Originally designed for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Survival Spanish Training Course is designed to introduce adults with no previous knowledge of the Spanish language, to effective Spanish communication, quickly.

The emphasis is on developing language skills needed for survival in a Spanish-speaking country, and is supported by authentic reading materials.

The audio includes the presentation of dialogs and vocabulary from the book and a number of listening comprehension activities to be done on assignments.

This course is available in a downloadable version which includes PDF and audio MP3s, a CD-ROM version with PDF and audio MP3s , and a printed text book and audio MP3 CD.

For more information visit Survival Spanish!.

The materials contained in this course includes (1) a Programmed Introduction to Thai Phonology; (2) a introduction to standard reading with a glossary; and (3) other supplementary materials.

The recordings are designed as an integral part of the course, and were designed to be used in a course of instruction where the main focus is on teaching the student to speak and understand Thai; this is not to say that reading and writing should be ignored, but that additional materials would be required for that purpose.

The course is available in a downloadable format (PDF & Audio MP3s), a CD-ROM version w(PDF & Audio MP3s), and a printed book and audio MP3 version.

For more information visit Foreign Service Institute Thai Basic Course.

The Basic Swahili course is designed as a survival language course. The emphasis is on developing the necessary language skills to handle the most frequent situations a visitor would meet with while traveling in East Africa as well as parts of the Congo.

The course includes grammar exercises and lessons which include: exchanging greetings, getting around on foot, using the telephone, eating out, social life, dealing with emergencies, and more. Learning activities in most units include: cultural notes, dialogues, exercises and drills, additional vocabulary, and language notes.

For more information visit FSI Basic Swahili CD ROM Course.

This Digital FSI German CD ROM Course is referred to as the FAST Course. FAST stands for Familiarization and Short Term Training and its 10 lesson are focused on providing the student with practical language skills for everyday situations usedful for getting around in German speaking countries like Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Though the course is focused on pratical scenarios it nevertheless contains language notes that explain the grammar of the language as exemplified in situational dialogues. The course also contains cultural notes explaind the nuisances, customs, and cultural aspects of German speaking culture.

For more information visit German FAST Course.

The Swedish Basic Course is sufficient for achieving a working knowledge of Swedish conversation, grammar, and pronunciation, and will serve the needs of travelers and business people.

This course presents Swedish in a way that allows students to master the material quickly and thoroughly, while moving at their own pace through lessons and reviews. This basic course in Swedish, emphasizes the spoken language with pronunciation drills and a large glossary.

For more information visit Foreign Service Institute Swedish Basic Course.

How Long Does It Take To Learn Spanish?

By Kyle W Bumpus

The first thing everybody wants to know when beginning to learn Spanish is how long it will take. Of course, the answer depends on what exactly you mean by the term "learn Spanish". Do you mean native-level fluency? Functionally conversant? Somewhere in between? The time required to reach a near-native fluency is different for everybody and is hard to measure, but there are rules of thumb on how long it usually takes to reach a level adequate for all but the most specialized of professional and social situations.

Conventional wisdom holds that it takes between 250 to 350 hours of dedicated study to reach a functional fluency in the Spanish language. This means you will be able to express abstract ideas and communicate in a manner consistent with an educated, professional adult. It does NOT mean that you will possess a native-level fluency as only prolonged study in a Spanish-speaking country is likely to yield such results. That said, a functional fluency is more than adequate to live and work in a Spanish-speaking country while you polish off your Spanish skills at leisure.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the branch of the US government responsible for teaching languages to US diplomats , allocates 6 months to the task of teaching Spanish to a new diplomat. Learning Spanish on your own time at home, you might wish to work at a less frenzied pace than that, but it is unlikely to take any reasonably determined Spanish student more than a year to achieve functional fluency.

Visit Learn Spanish On Your Own for Spanish learning tips, free Spanish lessons, verb conjugation charts, and Spanish learning product reviews to help you on your way to bilingualism.

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Guided Imitation May Be One Good Way to Learn Spanish Online

By Karen Celine Carlson

What is guided imitation? What programs use this term? Why is it important in Spanish learning? This review will answer these questions.

Guided Imitation

Guided imitation is described as the process that we use to acquire language as we grow up with it. Basically, we learn to speak by listening to others speaking, and we practice speaking in such a way that we use what we imitate and then expand upon it to be able to speak even more. We use language in the context of daily conversation, changing our vocabulary and sentences to meet the needs of the daily spoken interactions in our lives. The goal of guided imitation is to recreate an environment where we learn a new language while being guided into using vocabulary in new, ever changing contexts so that we eventually become fluent.

What Programs Use Guided Imitation?

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) originally developed this concept that has been used to train people in languages over the last 30 years. The FSI is the Federal Government's primary training institution for the United States foreign affairs community. As such, American diplomats and other professionals train in languages before they work abroad.

As a model for language learning the FSI has influenced other language learning programs to use guided imitation. One company, Loquella, advertises that it uses a program based on the FSI guided learning system, but that it has replaced workbooks and audio tapes with online language learning and downloadable MP3 player lessons. Their stated advantage for these departures from the government system is that the program is portable, and can be started and stopped at will.

The traditional emphasis on Spanish language and pronunciation drills exists to some degree in all online Spanish language learning programs. These tools are valuable for material retention and honing skills. But, the degree to which these are used varies from one online program to the next, and often, they are given new names to describe what is essentially a similar concept. The basics still remain the basics, and that is the way it is. But, what has improved over the years, is the technological advances that make Spanish learning like this fun and interesting. As our world becomes more and more visual, visual learning styles have been improved with colorful, engaging interactive software that softens the blow of the necessity for all of the traditional repetition and review that invariably needs to take place when learning a new language.

So, do look for signs of guided imitation in many of the Spanish learning programs you see online today. The process may have a different name, but you will still find that the process is pretty much the same. It is a valuable part of any Spanish learning program, regardless of what it is called.

See how you can Learn Spanish effectively and quickly, or at your very own pace! You can learn to Speak Spanish Confidently and Naturally in Less than 8 Weeks!

Learn to Speak Spanish Confidently, Naturally and Fluently with 31 Lesson Interactive Audio Course!
Learning Spanish Online has Never Been Easier or More Effective!

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Studying Spanish

Author: Jacob Lumbroso

Learning Spanish can be a enjoyable and can be a very useful skill. With a growing Hispanic population, Spanish is the second most frequently spoken language in the United States and with up to 500 million speakers, one of the key second languages in the world.


Learning Spanish can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as in teaching, translation, interpreting, medicine, law, and the travel industry. It can also lead to an increase in efficiency in dealing with Hispanic workers lacking proficiency in English. With growing Latin American economies, learning Spanish greatly improves your chances of success in job market dealing with these economies. Learning Spanish can be a fun task, as well as an important one.


Even if your just a casual traveler, learning Spanish can also be beneficial since most of the sign boards and instructions in Latin American are naturally written in Spanish. Learning Spanish in order to learn food, communicate with locals and talk with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly, if travel is your primary goal.


Learning Spanish is one step to joining the ranks of businesses oriented toward the growing Hispanic market in the United States and abroad. Spanish is one of the great languages of the world. Learning Spanish is, as it is all over the western world, part of a world-class education. The Spanish language is spoken throughout Latin America, the Carribean, and in Spain.


Learning Spanish is not easy and there is no single method can insure that the proficiency will be achieved without investment of time. So its important to vary your resources to insure that you maximize your language learning experience. Learning Spanish is definitely easier than learning a non-European language, at least for most English speakers.


Choosing the right course or methodology is of course critical and that can make learning Spanish a cake walk or much more difficult. Much importance should be given to the various accent marks and proper pronunciation while learning Spanish.


Learning Spanish doesn't require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. Learning Spanish is an ongoing and involved process. While you can't learn Spanish overnight, you can find resources that may give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert.


A critical challenge to remember is that of vocabulary. Having used various books and courses to learn to read Spanish I found several to be of benefit. The most valuable ones were those who made sure to present new Spanish vocabulary first. Then a short story utilizing this new vocabulary in conjunction with previously learned vocabulary was presented. In terms of audio, a variety of excellent courses are available.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/studying-spanish-382895.html

About the Author

Jacob Lumbroso is a world traveler and an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes articles on history and languages and has used Pimsleur Spanish Method courses to learn Spanish.

Our Pimsleur Rental program has proven so successful that we wanted to follow up with other rental possibilities.

This helps reduce the cost of learning a language and enables more people to complete their language goals. Since FSI courses are typically longer than Pimsleur courses and more extensive including text as well as audio, we have devised the following rental beta plan.

Rent a FSI Course and select the amount of time you need it for. Each course has different rental options available. When you're finished with the course, send it back using a traceable method like Postal Service, UPS, or Fedex Ground.

4 Month, 6 Month, and 9 Month Rentals are available to give students the best range of pricing and rental times possible.

For more information visit Rent a Foreign Service Institute Course.

Don Casteel's comprehensive Spanish course is based on the original Foreign Service Institute text. This DVD contains all eight levels of the Platiquemos course as PDF files (text) and MP3 files (audio).

The popular hardcopy version has sold for over $699 without the bonuses. This version contains the same exact content as the printed version, but the digital version allows us to reduce the cost substantially to only $185.

Learn to read, write, and speak - this course will take you far beyond most popular Spanish courses.

The DVD contains 3.51GB of material:

* the complete Platiquemos program (1400 pages of text and 54 hours of audio)

* Espanol Rapido (about 600 pages and 7 hours of audio)

* Cantemos, (73 traditional and modern songs with translations and notes of points of linguistic or cultural significance)

* Our new ebook with over 150 jokes and 50 cartoons, (likewise with translations and notes), false cognates [very important to learn], and a selection of colloquialisms and "cusswords" (the "cusswords are included not for you to learn to use, but because you will hear them and need to know what's being said).

Downloadable Bonuses:
Survival Spanish - The Course used and developed by the CIA for learning Spanish.
Programmatic Spanish Level 1
Programmatic Spanish Level 2
Spanish HeadStart for Spain
Spanish HeadStart Text for Latin America
(The DVD is a data disc for your computer, not a movie for your DVD player.)

Also be sure to check out our post on The Complete Spanish Program DVD/a> .