FSI Vietnamese Basic Course Volume 2 (Live Lingua)

FSI Vietnamese Basic Course Volume 2 on Live Lingua is a free slice of the classic Foreign Service Institute training materials, focused on Units 11 to 15. It works best if you already have some Vietnamese basics and you want lots of structured practice, not a gentle introduction.

You get a downloadable student text PDF and 18 audio recordings (multiple “tapes” per unit). The core method is guided imitation and repetition: listen, repeat, and swap words or grammar elements to build automatic responses. If you like drill-based learning, this can be very effective for getting sentence patterns into your mouth.

Where it falls short is that it feels old-school and classroom-oriented, with minimal hand-holding and little real conversation or cultural context. It is also Volume 2, so it assumes you have covered earlier material. Use it as a focused practice tool alongside something more modern, and grab it directly from Live Lingua.