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The Foreign Service Institute Courses

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the United States federal government's primary training institution for employees of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats as well as other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington.

You can learn more about the Foreign Language Training program of the Foreign Service Institute from the United States Department of State's website.

You can accessed archived FSI Italian courses from this website.

There are three types of archived courses on the website.

  1. Familiarisation And Short Term (FAST) Course

    The Familiarisation And Short Term (FAST) course is designed as 8 week intense courses in a classroom setting. It is not intended for self-learning. The FAST course is challenging, intensive and practical in nature.

    The course material is based on practical conversations that the student is likely to encounter on an everyday basis in their target country. There are one or more audio dialogues per unit that are used as the basis of the lesson.

    In the exercises that follow the audio dialogues, the student will be expected to respond to questions that are based from the previous dialogue. The course is for diplomats, so bear in mind that the language is oriented around meetings, offices and embassies.

    The FSI FAST Italian course has two versions, the original version and the updated version.

  2. Programmatic Course

    The Programmed courses provide introductory learning material for the target language. This course is not as intense as the other FSI courses, hence is it suitable courses for self-study and do not require the presence of an instructor.

    The Programmed course make for good introductory learning before moving onto the more intense, fast-moving basic course. The course rely more on the student performing exercises on paper and with the audio provided. The material learned is a lot more shallow and is designed to provide only a basic proficiency in the language.

    The Italian Programmatic Course is designed to introduce you to spoken Italian. It covers virtually the entire sound system of the language and introduces the basic grammatical categories. Although verb forms are for the most part limited to the present tense, a few other forms, including past tense and future tense are also presented and practiced. The vocabulary and structure in this volume prepare one for talking on the telephone, ordering a meal, discussing daily activities, or requesting someone to do something.

    You can access the FSI Italian Programmatic Course here.

  3. (DLI) Headstart Course

    This course is actually developed by the Defence Language Institute (DLI), a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other federal agencies and numerous customers around the world. Because the developer of this course is DLI, do not be surprised if the language is more military in nature.

    Unlike diplomats, military personnel (and their dependents) do not need the same level of language proficiency. They merely need a basic working proficiency to get by in their host country. Therefore, the headstart course is not as large or thorough as the basic course. This course is designed to be suitable for self-learning and do not require an instructor.

    The course is designed to get the student speaking with clear pronunciation. There is a lot of emphasis on good, accurate pronunciation to be understood well. The course provides a lot of cultural insight as well, and audio recordings reflect how to handle situations with cultural sensitivity. The course uses a lot more imagery as well. For example, it makes prolific use of images along with audio.

    For a study guide on how to use the DLI headstart courses, read the article of the introduction and study guide of headstart courses.

    You can access the DLI Italian Headstart Course here.