Table Of Contentper04 i 312-% S ugpsPef]hy
FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE
SPANISH / |
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ot BEST COPY AVAILABLE COMPLETED
SPANISH
PROGRAMMATIC COURSE
Volume 1
C. CLELAND HARRIS and ASSOCIATES
FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1967
DEPARTMEN T O F S TAT E
a
voto u Printing Office
Vor sale by the Superintendent ofD nrumenta. Gowerm ment
20
i
PREFACE
The FSI Spanish Programmatic Course, Volume |, comprising this textbook and accompanying
tape recordings together with an Instructor's Manvel, provides introductory learning materials for
use by speakers of English who want to acquire a style of Spanish whichi s neivteryh foermarl n or
overly casual.
The term programmatic has been adopted to denote a course which uses some techniques of
programmed instruction and is adaptable to classroom use, to selj-instruction or to combinations
of the two. Part of each unit is in programmed form; other parts follow a more conventioanuadilo -
lingual format. In all parts, the guiding principles have been simplicity and clarity of presentation,
characteristics which are required of materials to be used in seif-instruction, although the
materials have been written with the teacher-classroom situation also in mind.
The principal difference in approach between this course and the FS! Sponish Besic Course,
for example, is the emphasis placed here on advance, pre-class preparation of new material by the
student with the help of tapes. The principal difference between this and completely programmed
materials is that here the student’s self-study is, if possible, regularly punctuated by sessions in
the classroom with an instructor.
The linguist in charge has been C. Cleland Harris, Chairman of the Department of Romance
Languages. Helpful criticisms and contributions were made by Jaci L. Ulsh, linguist in charge of
Spanish and Portuguese, Rosalinda L. Pineda (Mexico) and Blanca C. de Spencer (Colombiaa)n d
by the following members of the teaching staff who participated in the pre-publication trials:
Hortensia T. de Berry (Cuba), Marta L. de Gowland (Argentina), Susana K. de Framinan (Argentina),
Gladys F. de Telford (Paraguay), Isabel B. de Lowery (Bolivia), Vicente N. Arbelaez (Colombia),
Jorge Krichmar (Argentina), Jose A, Mejia (Colombia), Juan Jose Molina (Honduras) and Bolivar
M. Cobos (Ecuador). Manuscript and final copy were prepared by Sra. Pineda, Irma C. de Ponce
and Marie Litvinoff.
The recordings were made in the studios of the FSI Language Laboratory with the technical
assistance of Charles P. Monat and Jose M. Ramirez under the general supervision of Gary Alley.
The bilingual contrasts on the tapes were voiced by Dr. Harris. Mr. Ulsh read the English
announcements, and Sra. de Spencer, Sr. Cobos and Sr, Mejia voiced the Spanish script.
James R. Frith, Dean
School of Language Studies
Foreign Service Institute
May 31, 1967 Department of State
iii
SPANISH |
BLATS PAGE
iv
SPANISH
This text is accompanied by an Instructor's Manual which contains the
script of all the recorded portions. Since many of the recorded exercises
do not appear in printed form in this, the student's book, the Instructor's
Manual serves as a handy, quick reference and guide for the teacher, Stu-
dents who are using this text for self-instruction will find the manual a
useful aid in checking the accuracy of their own performance,
FSI Spanish is designed primarily for the student
who has access to a tape player for study purposes, If one is not avail-
able, these materials should be used in the same manner as are more con-
ventional materials, After pre-publication trials with over 200 students,
PSI is convinced that the rate of progress is greater and the quality of
performance higher if the stvdent has an opportunity to study new material
before reporting to class through the use of facilities that allow him to
listen to the recorded portions of the lessons,
The authors like to believe that greater progress and higher quality
performance are inherent in some small way in the materials themselves;
however the general improvement in achievement is probably attributable
more to technique than to anything else, For example, a student who pre-
pares an assignment by himself, with his own tape player, will normally
be participating with the language at the enormous rate of 400 to 600
participations per hour, If the same material were being learned in a
class chared with only three other students, his participation rate would
be reduced accordingly: to 100 to 150 per hour, This participation rate,
of course, begins to approach insignificance with a class of twenty or
more students. In such large classes, teachers have to resort to choral
Vv
SPANISH
response techniques in order to counteract the low participation rates.
Much of the success of these materials is due, then, not necessarily to
the material itself but to the arrangement of material, an arrangement
that allows learning to take place profitably outside of the classroom
and thereby fosters unusually high participation rates for the individual
students,
A typical unit covers a cycle of work requiring from three to five
hours from the average or above-average student. The learning that takes
place during a typical cycle has been sequenced as follows:
1. (Gdservation of the language.
2. Practice with what has been observed,
3. Variation of that which has been practiced,
4, Applicationo f what has been learned in the first three
stages,
The sectioning of a unit relates to these four learning modes as
follows:
Sections within a unit: Learning Mode:
Introducito n
Dialog > ion
ical Observation and <
Practice Practice
Variati = Variation
Application ~ Application
The last section of each typical unit (the Application section) con-
tains no recorded portions, It is always a summary of the present unit
plus a recycling of important features of the preceding two units, No new
material is presented. It serves, therefore, (1) as a testing device to
determine how well the material has been learned, and (2) as a useful
*homework’ assignment where students do not have a tape player available
outside of class, This Application section can serve as a time-saver for
students with a limited but active knowledge of Spanish: they should work
the Application section first; if they can work it successfully, then that
unit does not have to be studied, and they should proceed to the next unit
until areas are encountered where errors are made, indicating the need to
vi
SPANISH
study that unit.
Volume I contains twenty-five units of a course planned to have about
100 units, The course as a whole is intended to lead the student to a
minimum professionally useful level of proficiency, The objective of this
first phase is to emphasize structure: word structure and, particularly,
phrase structure. Therefore, this volume -- especially through Unit 20 --
displays equal concern with phrase relators and connectors and with verb
morphology and shows considerably less concern with vocabulary. During this
introductory phase, the authors are more interested in the student's ability
to perfora in gulti-phrasal and multi-clausal sentences using the proper
connectors and relators than in his stockpiling of vocabulary items,
Subsequent units will develop the remaining verb morphology and expand the
vocabulary,
The average student requires approximately 100 hours to go through
Volume I, Since there are 417 ‘words’ in this volume, he assimilates
at the rate of 4,2'words' per hour. (A ‘word’ is defined as a preposition,
a verb form, an infinitive, a number, an adjective, etc.) This rate is
1,2 ‘words’ per hour higher than had been anticipated, but it is still
comparatively low, The distribution of vocabulary items (‘words’) is
as follows: 115 Nouns; 130 Verbs, Verb Forms or Phrases; 172 Other,
To encourage the feeling of realism while learning a foreign language,
the study of verb morphology commences with a past tense (Preterit’ or
‘Past of Events’), as it is more natural to ask the student ‘What did
you bring last night?’ than ‘What do you bring (at night)?" However, the
present tense is not ignored; most of the common verb phrases (e.g. tener
que --r, querer --r, ir a --r, acabar de ~-r, aprender a ~-r and so forth)
are treated also in the Present with the result that the student becomes
as capable in the Present as in the Past. The Imperative Mood is also
taught, as well as several frequent patterns of the Present Subjunctive,
PSI has used these materials in intensive, six-hours-per-day classes
as well as in one-hour-per-day classes, in the former, approximately two
hours of preparation followed by 30 minutes or more of classroom recita-
tion and application is the normal pattern, although variations have been
employed with equal success, (In one-hour-per-day classes, the ciass
vii
schedule is no different from that of classes using conventional materials
but the ‘homework’ is done where possible as pre-class work on a tape
player.) The normal practice of our teaching staff during the recitation
periods has been to spend ten to fifteen minutes checking briefly the
material studied by the student, followed by an equal or longer period
relating this material to the student's own experience. Depending on the
exigencies of scheduling, the instructor may follow these recitation
periods with instruction in new material, or, more usually, dismiss the
class for further self-study in the language laboratory,
viii
Grammatical Observations
Stress as Tense Marker
Person Marker Vowels
SaEE
Application
UNIT6
Introduction
Dialog
Intonation: Statement Identification Tests
Intonation: Polite Question Grammatical Observations
Intonation: Pamiliar Question Negation
USsBeS
Intonation: Question with a Application
Question Word
Test C
UNIT7
Introduction
UNIT 2
Writing Awareness (Includ-
Introduction ing qu-)
Vowel Reductions Dialog
Dialog Grammatical Observations
Identification Tests The Verb: Four Forms
The Verb: The Affix lo
Application
UNIT3
Int roduct ion
UNIT 8
Dialog
Identification Tests Introduction
Grammatical Observations Writing Awareness (Cont'd)
‘Counter-words' and ‘Counter- Gender Concept (un/una)
phrases’ Dialog
*Being' Grammatical Observations
Ser/Estar (1)
Application
UNIT4 &
Introduction
UNIT 9
Assimilation: vowel * b/d
Dialog Introduction
Identification Tests Writing Awareness (Cont'd)
Grammatical Observations Assimilotion: s.r +d
The Verb Orthographic Accent
‘In’, ‘at’ Dialog
Grammatical Observations
Ser/Eetar (11)
UNIT5
Lal e Test
Introduction Nationality
Dialog Pluralization
Identification Tests Gender (concluded)
