Swahili Language

The FSI Swahili Basic pack actually contains three courses, the main Basic course that was published in 1968 and two other courses that appeared in 1966, a General Conversation course and a Geography course.

The General Conversation and Geography courses comprise the two components of the Active Introduction, and both use a system of “cycles”, where language is presented, mimicked and then used for communication. General conversation is made up of 87 cycles, while Geography includes 38 cycles followed by a series of texts.

Each cycle should take around 30 minutes to study the first time, and then should be reviewed a couple of times for a total of another 30 minutes, meaning students should spend around one hour on each cycle.

The FSI Swahili Basic course follows the familiar pattern common to other FSI Basic courses and consists of 150 relatively short units in which language is first presented in the form of dialogs and then practiced with exercises.

The Basic course was designed to be studied intensively for around 30 hours a week, but it could also be studied in a longer program involving around six hours of weekly learning. It is also suitable for autonomous learners.