Customer Reviews

Brazilian Portuguese: A Complete Course for Beginners (Teach Yourself; Book only)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Looking at the good side of this course, the dialogues use everyday vocabulary in a variety of settings. The book may make the language look easy, it is not demanding, but this is a mixed blessing, for you do not learn much either. I was rather disappointed. There does not seem to be a plan to the way in which the language is presented, vocabulary and grammar are hardly explained and the tapes are too fast.
This course can however be complemented with Manuela Cook's Portuguese course (February 2002), which gives you more all around and has taught me Portuguese for Brazil and also other parts of the world where this language is spoken. I found in it the vocabulary and grammar explanations I needed; the tapes are at the right speed; and there are plenty of exercises, which are fun to do and gave me the practice I was looking for.

I bought the book with the audio cassette. Let me just say this: The author is British and she tries to give you "English" pronunciations for Portuguese words. This would be fine and good if I were British (I'm not) as they pronounce certain vowels differently than Americans. Also the cassette is organized into dialogues. The actors speak so quickly that I had to listen to dialogue 1 about 5 times before I could even get 50% of the sounds. What would have made the tape better would have been to slow down the dialogue and give the listener a chance to role play as one of characters with a pause after each line to give you a chance to process and say the sentences. Also, vocabulary is not explained at all nor is the grammar. You also don't get the sounds for the dipthongs. Even the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants are too quick for you to repeat after the speaker on the tape. And of course the key to learning a new language is repetition. Further the dialogue is so quick you can't tell if a word ending in "o" is pronounced "oo". As you know this is the most confusing thing about Portuguese.

After rewinding and rewinding, I gave up. I wasted my money on this one but it hasn't dampened my passion for learning the language. I think I'll just take a class at my local college.

So for those of you who complained about not having the tape and just the book. Don't sweat it. It's not worth it. Take a class or impose yourself on a Brazilian Portuguese-speaking friend.

Maybe this is a good book for people who have already learned Spanish. I don't think that it really starts at "the beginning". I'm afraid that I will have to look for a more basic text and return to this one at some later point. Absoultely no grammar, just moves straight into dialogues and exercies.

This book claims to be a complete course and a teach yourself one. Well, it's neither. This is no more than a feeble introduction to the language. Claiming that it is a complete course is misleading. For a teach yourself book it does not give you enough support. I had to buy a dictionary because the vocabulary is only part explained. I had to buy a grammar because the language explanations are unclear, to say the least. I had to pay a native speaker to help and pronounce the words because the recordings are too fast. The native speaker disagrees with most of the book, she says that this is not Brazilian Portuguese, is foreign Portuguese. Buying this course has been a frustrating experience and money badly spent. I feel positively cheated.

The audio is too fast for any beginner to follow. The dialogues may have some useful vocabulary but the vocabulary is not explained properly. Nothing is explained properly really! The whole thing is rushed through. You just get the language as it comes. There is no grading, no teaching step by step, as you find in a good course. Actually I have found one. If you want a good teach yourself portuguese course, get Manuela Cook's instead!

This course has nice pictures but poor teaching. Some dialogues are unrealistic. A lady has lost her handbag, goes to the lost property office, does not report the lost bag, but the officer promises to look for it. How did he know she had lost the bag?

The course is rather heavy on grammar but does not explain it well. It says that 'Faca o favor de trabalhar' means Please work. This is talking to one person. To ask more than one person you change the verb from 'faca' to 'facam'. Then it goes on to say that you may also hear another form, 'Faz o favor de trabalhar' with an identical meaning when talking to just one person. End of explanation, The book does not seem to be aware that in this case you change the veb from 'faz' to 'fazem' to ask more than one person.

Some verbs appear in early units but are explained only fifty or more pages later. The future is introduced in dialogue 1 of unit 1 and explained in unit 14. The past is introduced in dialogue 1 of unit 7 and explained in unit 15. The reflexive verbs are introduced in dialogue 2 of unit 1. There is a brief explanation in unit 2 and in the Grammar Index there is a promise of a further explanation in unit 20. But there isn't a unit 20! The last one is unit 18.

This is all rather disappointing. I shall not be using this course with my students.

I bought BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE A COMPLETE COURSE FOR BEGINNERS and was rather disappointed when I found out that this is hardly a complete course.

This is no more than an introduction to the language and not a very good one. The dialogues are very much the same as in any other language course, but the language explanations are too limited. You are left without enough information to make your own sentences adapting the dialogues to your own circumstances. The exercises have lots of pictures, almost like a book for children, but they are superficial, like the language explanations. At the end of the book the imperfect of verbs is explained with a scrolling line. Is this meant to be a joke?

In addition to the tapes being too fast, for a teach-yourself course this book should explain things better. In the first unit you come across 'como se escreve?' The translation in the vocabulary box is 'how do you write it?' The grammar pages give 'voce / tu /o senhor / a senhora' for 'you', no mention to 'se'. 'Se' crops up again in the second unit for 'como se chama?' 'what is your name?' The grammar pages show 'se' meaning 'his / her / yourself'. Still no explanation for 'como se escreve?' 'how do you write it?'. The whole course is written in this style. Everything is rushed through and some of it does not seem to make much sense. Very frustrating!

I have used this book to teach Portuguese to American students. I am a native Brazilian, and I was shocked with the poor quality of the audio tape that is sold with the book. It is hard to imagine that the "native Brazilians" selected for this tape passed any kind of audition. They have a horrible pronunciation and they perform very badly. Rather than acting naturally, they restrict to simply reading (poorly) the text. At one time, there is a lady who manages to say "Liverpoor" when trying to read "Liverpool".
As to the book itself, it contains many errors and the pages fall off. Just after starting to use the book, the pages keep falling off one after another. In one of the book/tape sets purchased by the school, the two audio tapes were identical (both were "Tape 1"). When we contacted the publisher to obtain a replacement of the duplicate tape, we were told that the entire set should be returned. We explained that we needed to keep the book and the other tape to continue with the class, but the publisher was inflexible. In view of the impasse, another student offered to copy his "Tape 2" into a blank cassette tape and solved the problem.
I would not recommend this book, not so much for its contents, which are good, but for its poor presentation, for the bad quality of its audio cassette and for the poor customer service provided by its publisher.

The whole course lacks in structure. Vocabulary covers different useful areas, but there is not a graded progression in the way the language is introduced. It all seems to be at random. The tapes are too fast. As a whole, the course is not user friendly for the very beginner and it does not offer enough to be a refresher course. I would recommend another course instead. Prista's Say it in Portuguese would be a good choice.