Colloquial Swedish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Multimedia Set Includes 2 Cassettes and 2 CDs) [Box set] [Paperback]

Philip Holmes (Author), Gunilla Serin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 2003 | ISBN-10: 041530766X | ISBN-13: 978-0415307666 | Edition: 2

Colloquial Swedish is easy to use and completely up to date. Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Swedish. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
What makes Colloquial Swedish your best choice in personal language learning?
* interactive - lots of dialogues and exercises for regular practice
* clear - concise grammar notes
* practical - useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
* complete - including answer key and special reference section.
This pack contains 120 minutes of audio material, recorded by native speakers, on both cassettes and CDs. By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in a broad range of situations.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Swedish --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (December 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041530766X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415307666
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,856,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Nonfiction > More Languages > Swedish

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great book to get you started., August 10, 2000

By 

Steve Malcolm (Montreal, CANADA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Swedish (Colloquial Series) (Audio Cassette)

I learned Swedish without a single formal lesson extremely quickly (in 4 months to fluency whilst living in a Swedish / English speaking environment), and bought and borrowed an enormous range of books to bring me there. This is the book that I used to learn my first words. For the extremely early stages of learning the language I would recommend this book and tape, but once you get to about lesson 6 or 8 you will move quicker by shifting to a book concentrating on vocabulary and idioms in conjunction with The Essentials of Swedish Grammar. See my review of the Teach Yourself series Swedish book for further advice on which books I recommend as you progress through intermediate and advanced.

The book is a serious textbook (but not dry and boring like in high school), and the Authors are writing it to an audience who actually want to learn Swedish, and are not interested in learning only travel phrases. This book does very nicely, but does ask you to move very quickly to get from one lesson to the next from about lesson 5 or 6. Nevertheless, you will be amazed at how quick your progress is. Each lesson takes less than an hour, so in 6 or eight hours of studying, you will be able to speak basic Swedish with a limited vocabulary using the correct word order in the present, past and future (it is at this stage also that I recommend moving off this book to one that builds vocab and another that presents you all the grammar of the language in a nutshell). You can, after spending a week or two with other books, return to this book to complete the remainder of the lessons, most of which will be very easy, some of which will still be very difficult (I dipped in and out of it but never again worked with it as true programmed learning). This book is of high quality, but needs to be used in conjunction with other books for the quickest possible gains and then should be followed up with more advanced books to continue your Swedish. This book is titled "The Complete Course" but I would like to emphasise the "For Beginners" aspect. Your learning certainly does not begin and end with this book.

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful course in Swedish, October 12, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Swedish (Colloquial Series (Book Only)) 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This work is an excellent, thorough welcoming into the Swedish language. Having had experience with several "Colloquial" texts, this is by far the best. Not only are the important aspects of daily Swedish language tackled, but real-life situations are taught besides just phrases like "where can I change traveller's cheques?" The person who finishes this course is truly a Swedish speaker, not someone who merely gets along.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful but not for a Beginner, March 22, 2001

By 

Andrew Freborg (Stow, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Colloquial Swedish (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

As a new student of Swedish, I bought the book and tapes as a suppliment to my course materials. The book is helpful, but not as easy to use the Ake Viberg grammar reference - which facilitates more rapid reference to grammar rules. The Holmes courses emphasis on everyday spoken Swedish is however welcome. I was very dissapointed in the tapes - the British narrator is quite dry and somewhat annoying with his constant "listen to the speakaa" phrases, and I was expecting more drilling on verb usage as opposed to just listening to conversations and reading. The tapes main function I guess seem to be to get the student used to hearing rapidly spoken Swedish.