FSI Vietnamese Basic Course Volume 1 (Live Lingua)

This is Volume 1 of the classic FSI Vietnamese Basic Course, hosted for free by Live Lingua. It is best for motivated self-learners who want lots of structured listening and repeat-after-me practice, especially in Southern Vietnamese pronunciation.

On the Live Lingua course page, you get the full student text PDF plus a big set of audio recordings: an extended pronunciation section (multiple “Pronunciation Tape” tracks) and unit tapes for Units 1 to 10. The course follows the old-school audio-lingual approach, so you spend a lot of time imitating, drilling, and building automatic sentence patterns.

It does well as a pronunciation and speaking habit builder if you actually do the drills out loud and repeat them until they feel easy. Where it falls short is that it is very drill-heavy, the pacing can feel intense for casual learners, and it does not give you real conversation feedback. The content and style are also dated compared with modern textbooks, so many learners pair it with a more up-to-date course for vocabulary and everyday situations.