{"id":7147,"date":"2023-07-24T05:01:37","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T09:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fluentu.com\/blog\/?p=7147"},"modified":"2025-02-17T02:22:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T07:22:14","slug":"foreign-service-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fluentu.com\/blog\/learn\/foreign-service-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Study with FSI Language Courses (The Way Diplomats Learn)"},"content":{"rendered":"

FSI language courses<\/a> are used by the U.S. Government to train diplomats and other officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These self-guided text and audio courses aren’t the flashiest options out there, but they are useful and thorough language lessons\u2014all available completely for free<\/a>.\u00a0The FSI lessons come from a reputable source where the material (very crucially) needs to be accurate. And like any free resource, they are definitely worth giving a try!<\/p>\n

In this post, we’ll go over what the FSI language courses are and how exactly you can make use of them in your own studies. You can also check out this video from the FluentU YouTube channel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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What are FSI Language Courses?<\/h2>\n

The Foreign Service Institute<\/a> (FSI) is the organization that trains people for foreign affairs positions in the U.S. State Department.<\/p>\n

Citizens sent to represent the United States abroad need to navigate important diplomatic affairs with cultural awareness\u2014and they often need to get by in places where English isn’t spoken.<\/p>\n

So, language education is a vital part of training for diplomats.<\/p>\n

They take the FSI courses to learn through professional instruction while also practicing self-study on their own time using language modules\u00a0designed for solo learning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lucky for us, these self-study materials are public domain and free for anyone to distribute and use! They’re available as a series of correlated audio and text language lessons.<\/p>\n

How to Learn with FSI Language Courses<\/h2>\n

So you’re ready to try out the FSI courses… but where to begin?<\/p>\n

We’ll go through, step-by-step, what you need to do to get started learning and\u00a0 to use these courses to their full potential.<\/p>\n

1. Decide where you’ll access the courses<\/h3>\n

Because the FSI courses are public domain, they can be found at multiple different locations on the web.<\/p>\n

You might prefer one site’s interface over another, but they are basically the same courses across different sites wherever you find them (though some sites might have updated their selection of courses more recently).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of the most convenient ways to access the FSI courses for free:<\/p>\n