Customer Reviews

Multilingual FSI: Cantonese Basic, Level 1 (Cassette Included)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A thought of some extra things to say about this course.

Good Point:
The early lessons carefully cover pronunciation and the the later lessons cover grammar and vocabulary. The progression is well thought out.

Bad Point:
The vocabulary list given is not complete. New words are introduced in the Drills which are not included in the Vocab list. I prepared my own vocab list becuase of it.

Overall:
The first ten lessons are very hard because so much is new and you need to practice a lot of basics. After that it gets easier and you get faster. I took 2-3 weeks for each lesson in the first ten, but after that I could manage about one lesson a week. I took my walkman with me on the walk to my train and the train trip, and so a lot of time I spent learning Cantonese was not taken from my normal day.

An enjoyable and challenging course.

This is for people who REALLY want to learn to speak Cantonese (rather than people who just want to learn a few phrases for fun).

It works if you put the work in. The course covers all the grammar of Cantonese and about 1,000 words. If you really do follow the lessons and study as directed you will be able to speak Cantonese at the end, and fluently.

Good points: 1. The Yale romanisation workbooks are comprehensive and useful. You can buy dictionaries using Yale to supplement it. Real Cantonese speakers tell me I have no accent - I sound like a Hong Kong speaker.

2. The best part are what they call 'drills'. You learn something and then they ask you questions using examples and variations. You have to think in Cantonese to supply the answer. That is they way you become fluent - lots of practice using the language.

3. It's cheap compared to taking classes and lessons. One-to-one lessons might cost 100 times this course. The cassettes in this course are available 24 hours a day, are consistent, don't complain about having to repeat themselves and let you study at your own pace.

Bad Points:
1. There are lots of typos (even beginners can spot them easily).

2. The 'Conversations for Listening' are not sensible - they introduce new words and grammar without teaching you first. After about lesson 15 I gave up taking the 'Conversations for Listening' seriously.

3. The course was prepared in 1970 when there was a High Falling tone in Cantonese. It makes the Yale romanisation a little more complex than it need be, although you still learn effectively the right pronunciation.

4. It can be a bit tiring. I bought the simple Pimsleur Cantonese course as well, and used the easy Pimsleur course as a rest when I was a bit tired from FSI.

Overall, it is nearly perfect really (the few bad points are easily overlooked for the quality of the teaching). It takes around 400 hours - of course. Even if you go to Hong Kong and learn the hard way it will still take around 400 hours (and a lot of stress). This way you can pace yourself and enjoy the learning.

I feel the cost was easily worth it. No friend or partner could be expected to have the patience to teach you a whole language. This way you can learn pretty well by yourself, and have fun too.
The catch is you've got to be serious. There are no shortcuts to learning a language. Don't buy this unless you are prepared to put the work in.

Before I began working with this program, I worked with Pimsleur's Cantonese, which I found very helpful, together with attempting to pick words from watching numerous HK movies - so for me the beginning lessons in this course were relatively easy.

This course begins with extensive pronounciation drills, and given the fact that Cantonese is a tonal language, drills almost felt like singing lessons, which was fun.

FSI Cantonese program has two levels - each one comprises 15 lessons. The entire Cantonese text is romanized. Chinese characters are provided (handwritten) only in vocabulary lists. I am happy that they are provided, but in order for them to have any meaning for you, you'd have to get other books / programs for writing Chinese characters. Good beginner program for learning to read and write Chinese characters would be Easy Chinese Tutor.

This program does guide you through grammar, and the best part of the program are numerous drills - my favorite being "substitution exercises" which help to thoroughly assimilate the material covered in each lesson.

In all the years of learning numerous foreign languages and working with many different methods and courses, I have found the drills provided through FSI language programs, to lead to the fastest proficiency in mastering the language.