FSI Vietnamese Basic Course

Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam where it has around 95 million speakers. It is also used as a means of communication among Vietnam’s many ethnic minorities in a country where people in neighboring villages often speak completely unrelated tongues.

It is a major regional language, and due to Vietnam’s growing economic weight, its importance is only increasing, so for anyone interested in traveling or doing business in Southeast Asia, it is a handy one to know.

For speakers of European languages, Vietnamese can be tough, especially in terms of pronunciation. It has a total of six tones, one or two of which are especially tricky, and it also includes a large number of vowel sounds that can require a lot of effort to master.

The difficulties are compounded by the fact that the pronunciation in the northern and southern parts of the country are quite different – but unlike many other East Asian languages, it is written in a version of the Roman script, so at least there’s no new alphabet to learn.

For anyone looking for a linguistic challenge, Vietnamese would be a great choice – and with this free online Vietnamese course, you have a wealth of materials to help you get started.

Course Details

What is the FSI Vietnamese Basic Course?

Created in 1967, the FSI Vietnamese course is a comprehensive collection of materials that will teach you the Vietnamese of the south.

The course starts with an understandably extensive introduction to pronunciation. Then, after working through the sounds of southern Vietnamese, the rest of the course consists of dialogs that present a new language along with drills for practice. This allows you to build your fluency while retaining everything you have learned.

In total, the course comprises 15 lessons, and each one is accompanied by audio recordings to help you keep working on your pronunciation.

How was FSI Vietnamese Basic originally used?

Like other FSI Basic courses, FSI Vietnamese was created to give US diplomatic staff a good grounding in the language before being sent to work in the country.

Students were expected to attend around six hours of lessons each day, and the time spent in the classroom was supposed to be supplemented by a further two hours of individual study.

During class time, students were expected to speak only Vietnamese, and outside of their lessons, they were encouraged to speak Vietnamese together. In this way, after only around six months of study, they were able to reach a good level of proficiency in the language.

How can you use FSI Vietnamese Basic?

Although you probably can’t hope to recreate the learning environment of an intensive FSI course, you can still make use of this rich resource to enhance your autonomous study of the language.

If you have another Vietnamese coursebook, you can use the FSI materials to supplement what you are learning, going through the dialogs and drills to help boost your listening, pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a free Vietnamese course to use as your primary learning material, you can work through the lessons, supplementing them with any other resources you have at your disposal.

Taking it further

Volume 1

Student Text

Unit	Audio
Guide to Pronunciation	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3 · Tape 4 · Tape 5 · Tape 6 · Tape 7 · Tape 8
Lesson 01	Tape
Lesson 02	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 03	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 04	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3 · Tape 4
Lesson 05	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3 · Tape 4
Lesson 06	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 07	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 08	Tape 1 · Tape 2
Lesson 09	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 10	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3

Volume 2

Student Text

Unit	Audio
Lesson 11	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 12	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3
Lesson 13	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3 · Tape 4
Lesson 14	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3 · Tape 4
Lesson 15	Tape 1 · Tape 2 · Tape 3 · Tape 4