ABSTRACT
The US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was founded in 1947 shortly after the end of World War II to provide necessary job-related training to Foreign Service officers (FSOs) and staff in the Department of State as well as some employees of other agencies in the US foreign affairs community. The type of language taught at FSI in the first few months of the curriculum is general language, not substantially different from that taught in most university language courses. The complete FSI Standard Chinese language curriculum is eighty-eight weeks in duration, with the first year of training at FSI's headquarters near Washington, D.C. and the second year at FSI's field school in Taiwan. Since the FSI programs have certain features and practices that in some ways make them more effective than most academic programs, it might be useful for those in academia to know more about them and learn from their experiences.
