This is a very interesting site! Have you ever wanted to learn a foreign language? Well now you can for free, with FSI Language Courses.
Developed by the United States by the Foreign Service Institute in the late 1940s and early 1950s these courses have entered the public domain and as such are being made available on this website by an unaffiliated party.
To navigate the site is easy. Just select the language you are most interested in learning. I came here for the French, as I’m trying to brush up my French for a college level competency test.
When you select a language, you’ll be given a menu for that course. Each menu is different and is based on what course material they have for that language. The really cool thing is most of them have language tapes that go along with them that you can listen to as you work through the exercises associated with the lesson.
From a historical standpoint, it was very interesting to see how they approached teaching linguistics in first part of the 20th century.
UPDATE – Unfortunately this site was shut down without notice at the end of February 2013.
~Amanda
I cannot access the FSI website. It keeps giving me an error and telling me I cannot use this server. Can you help?
It was working very recently but it’s all gone missing sometime in the last few days. I hope it reappears soon.
I also cannot access the site. I’ve been working daily, and I’m anxious to continue!
sorry, i deleted the leading “h” in the URL. Here it is again:
http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Foreign%20Service%20Institute%22%20AND%20collection%3Aopensource
It was working just a few days ago, and I wanted to access it today, and I got the same error message! Anyone know what is going on?
They have put this free site back up along with the free DLI and Peace Corps language courses at https://www.livelingua.com/project/
I hope that helps.
Hi Guys,
I have reinstated the original 2006 website:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.net
Happy learning