Notes on FSI

I have struggled to study German more than once a week for the last few weeks. Fortunately I was able to put in a solid 3 hours or so today. I gleaned some useful insights about studying using the FSI program. I doubt this is how students in the FSI school were instructed to use the course, but for self study I think this technique works wells.

The following sections occur sequentially in each lesson. I believe the other language courses are similar.

Dialog for Listening
Listen to the dialog to get acquainted with the new vocabulary.
Go through the dialog line by line and make flash cards for all new words and phrases. I have separated by flashcard stacks (using Flash My Brain on my iphone) into three different stacks:
1) Commons - all the basic adverbs, adjectives, prepositions etc, such as opposite (adv), small (adj), and beside (prep.) I'm omitting less essential words like green and stylish and reserving for the Nouns, etc stack
2) Verbs - all verbs. I skip obscure ones, but they never come up in my lessons anyway.
3) Nouns, etc - all useful nouns and less essential adjectives and adverbs. If a base with multiple usages has been presented, such as America and American, it makes sense to put them on the same card. I omit nouns that aren't useful or dated, e.g. the smoking table, the person-to-person call, and the phone book (I'm determined to never use a phonebook again.)

Notes on Pronunciation
I don't make much use of this section unless it teaches sounds that I believe are giving me difficulty.

Grammar
I read this carefully to ensure that I have complete comprehension. The following substitution drills are so much based on this grammar section that it behooves you to grasp everything.

Substitution Drills
Work through the substitution drills to learn the new grammar and vocabulary.
* At each drill stop the audio if any grammatical constructs don't make sense right off the bat. Figure out the grammar and restart.
* After each drill note any vocabulary that you don't know yet. Go to your flashcards, look up the word, and create a mnemonic device (words, pictures, or both.) This is a great time to create the mnemonic device because it is in the context of speaking the word. It also keeps you from making mnemonic devices for new vocabulary that you learned instantly. For instance, I learned that Teppich means carpet or rug while I was going through the dialog just because it sounds funny, thus I don't need any help remembering it.
* You may want to go through the substitution drills twice (in two different sittings) depending on the complexity of the new grammar.

Variation/Translation Drills
These drills offer sentences in English that focus on a certain grammatical theme and vary the sentences in each drill for practice. I always stop the audio after each sentence is spoken in English and then try to translate as quickly as I can. In other languages I would do this without pausing and without the book, but it's too hard for me with my current level of German. Like the last section, I write down mnemonic devices on my flash cards for new vocabulary that didn't show up in the previous section.

Vocabulary Drills
These are like the previous section but they are themed around a vocabulary word or construct, usually a verb or verb phrase. Approach them as described for the previous section.

I'll probably edit this post as I come up with new ideas for learning words