Customer Reviews

FSI Mastering Portuguese, Vol. I (12 Cassettes)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm no linguist. But I needed to learn Portuguese to live in Brazil, where my job was about to take me in three short months. My manager-to-be in São Paulo made no bones about his displeasure at receiving another American under his wing who spoke no Portuguese. He said I needed to come to Brazil speaking -- and well, or my contract wouldn't be renewed at the end of six months. Barron's Mastering Portuguese seemed like the logical choice because it's the same program used by American diplomats trained by the Foreign Service who need to hit the ground running when sent to a new country for work. I crossed my fingers and dived in. For the first chapters of this program, you do nothing but repeat vowels. Again and again. And again. Its boring, for sure. But it ensures that your pronunciation of this beautiful language is as close to native as possible. The rest of the course leads you through a series of recorded drills that sharpen your conversational chops and unobtrusively teach you grammar along the way. The best way to learn anything is by repetition and that's the framework for learning through this program. I found myself dreaming in Portuguese within two months, and speaking it better than I ever thought I would. When I arrived in Brazil, my Portuguese was by no means fluent -- even the best programs can't give you fluency; you have to go live in the country -- but I was making my desires understood and understanding natives. The biggest compliment I received (which in turn is the biggest compliment I give this course) is when I was in Rio, I was told again and again that I sounded like I was born there. People couldn't believe I was American. This is not an easy course to get through. It requires hard work, patience and consistent practice. But if you're serious about learning Portuguese, there is no better way. Believe me, I've tried them all.

First of all, as some of the other reviewers have stated, this is Brazilian Portuguese (which is fine with me, since I was learning it for travel to Brazil). Secondly, since the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I will first tell you the practical results of a thorough study of the 12 cassettes and the book, including practicing all the drills, etc. I have taken 4 recent trips to Brazil, 3 in the past year, all after completing this self-study course. I attempted to speak only Portuguese whenever possible. I found that I was able to speak and read Portuguese quite well. In fact, several Brazilians complimented me on how well I spoke Portuguese. I was able to read the newpapers easily with a dictionary in hand. The bad news, however, is that I found myself largely unable to understand the spoken language. I will elaborate a bit later in the review.

I'll now go into some of the technicalities of grammar, and it will reveal some of the ways in which this program is lacking. The program begins with pronunciation drills, which is fine. It then moves to simple declarative and interrogative sentences in the indicative mode. You then go on to learn the imperfect and the preterit. Astonishingly, the program never gets to the future or conditional tenses. The closest it comes to the future is sort of a substitute future, i.e., "I'm going to...," with which you can get by quite well and which we use in English, but not knowing the true future leaves one somewhere short of true fluency. As far as the conditional, i.e., ""I would...," I found myself totally unable to use it and had to turn to other books for this.

This brings us to the subjunctive, which is much more important in Romance languages than in English, and which Portuguese speakers use in everyday speech. This program does not address it at all, so I had to turn elsewhere to learn this. You could get by using the indicative to state contrary to fact situations (wishes, etc.) and you will be understood, but you will be using bad grammar from a native speaker's point of view. The imperative is also skirted, but there is enough in this program to figure it out.

The program is badly organized in many ways, some of them quite frustrating. There is no vocabulary, either at the beginning of chapters or at the end of the book. New words are introduced in the text as you go along. Thus when you forget a word, you have to leaf through the text to find it. The vocabulary is also quite limited, and I found myslef having to consult a dictionary constantly (which, I suppose, is normal when you're learning a language).

One of the most infuriating things about this program is that throughout the book you'll come to a sction headed "Comprehension," wherein you will listen to a series of Portuguese phrases on the cassette, spoken at normal conversational speed, and are expected to understand them. The idiotic thing is that these phrases are not written down anywhere! Consequently, if you are unable to understand a phrase from the tape, as was the case with quite a few, you're out of luck! Several times throughout the book it says "consult your instructor," so this program was obviously intended for classroom use, in which case the untranscribed phrases would be understandable. I also frequently got the feeling that this program was Part I of a program for which a Part II was envisioned but never completed.

I hope that I haven't stressed the negative excessively. This program is a good beginning, but that's all it is, and I suppose it's as good a place to start as any. I haven't given up on my goal to master Brazilian Portuguese, but for true fluency I'm afraid I'll have to turn elsewhere.

While living in Spain, I made some amazing friends who lived in Brazil. When I came home I decided to learn "Brazilian" Portuguese. This set up is excellent, with great choreography between the book and the tapes. The first few chapters are simply vowel sounding, boring yet essential to properly speaking this beautiful language. The following segments build on what you have learned, with little dialogs that first let you repeat after them and then play again so that you can hear how the sentences really sound at real life speeds. It's also a 12 tape set, which really brings you very near fluency, although there is no substitute for immersion. The only fault I can find with this might be overall vocabulary, you might want to buy a supplimental book, although it's by no mean necessary. With a knowledge of Spanish, this is very easy flowing, but it is so well done with it's foundations that non-spanish speakers with have no trouble as well, I was speaking basic Portuguese (barely enough to get by in Brazil) in 2 weeks.

A lot of negative reviews on here feature the fact this course teaches Brasilian as opposed to continental Portuguese. I wanted to learn Brasilian so I Loved the course. There are other products which teach Continental portuguese pronunciation but few that teach Brasilian.

If you do all the exercises and don't try to cheat, this course will teach you the fundamentals needed to speak, read, write and understand Brasilian Portuguese. Nothing will ever replace "immersion" for learning but this course is worth the investment if you are going to Brasil. Once you complete the course you will need to enhance your language skills by expanding your vocabulary but that is true in any language course. The more you learn the better you understand.

For those wanting Continental Portuguese, this course could help you understand the written language and fundamentals but yes the pronunciation would be different in Portugal. I have used Continental Portuguese materials in learning Portuguese also. The variances claimed by the one reviewer is overblown but there are variances as there is in the English langauge (compare Boston, MA with Savannah, GA with New Orleans. LA, etc...)

Overall it is the best Portuguese material I have found and I have bought at least 6 different ones.

Yes, another overwhelmingly positive review for this course. It's not a plot; it's just true. This is an effective course, a bargain at twice the price.

The mere fact that it ships with 12 cassettes should be your first clue that it's different from other courses. Opening the book and seeing that the first five or eight chapters are really just basic drills and little vocabulary should be your next clue.

Learning a new language, for some of us, is hard. This course breaks it down into mastering sounds first, then mastering words and flow, then learning vocabulary, then learning (a little) grammar.

It teaches your ear to 'hear' Brazilian Portuguese, and that I think is the ultimate arbiter between this and any other course; what good is a language that you can speak but not understand?

I've owned shorter courses, different courses, computer-based courses, but nothing beats the comprehensive approach of an FSI course. This is easily the best Brazilian Portuguese course I've experienced; the fact that I'm from Newark and can get praise from Brazilians on my pronounciation and grammar should be proof enough.

If you want fun and happy learning with gentle, friendly encouragement, go buy a "Portuguese for Dummies" book. You won't learn the language, but you'll enjoy yourself. If you just want to get a few phrases, go get a Lonely Planet phrasebook.

But if you aren't afraid of hard work and want the BEST there is, then get the Foreign Language Institute series.

If language courses were judged on cosmetic features, this course would get zero. There are no glossy pictures, cheerful icons, in fact the text book was clearly written with a typewriter (!) The writing style is dry as a bone and the content rigorous and academic.

But if you have the ability to see through that, then the course is utterly flawless. You will need LOTS of self-discipline (but then you need that to learn any language, regardless of the course chosen). I've usd this course for a few months and have already been able to have some basic conversations with some Brazillian friends. I'm planning on getting some more FLI series as a result.

As a final note - be aware that the course is designed for Brazillian, not European Portuguese. These dialects are quite different from each other, much moreso than the US-British English differences. If you are travelling to Africa (ie. Mozambique, Angola, etc) this course will serve you very well.

I have almost terminated the course and I agree completely with one of the previous reviews. Good points:
1) The teaching method of the course is excellent: by forcing the reader/listener to repeat and practice the same topics again and again a motivated learner can really absorb the basics of the Portuguese language.
2) The grammar is explained in simple but precise terms without becoming too technical (romance languages grammars can be very complicated for an English speaker).
3) The course is "fanatical" about the pronunciation and the intonation of the Portuguese language. Portuguese/Brazilian is phonetically difficult even for other romance languages speakers.
4) The price: very good compared with similar size and quality courses.
Bad points:
1) The original FSI title was "Portuguese Basic Course", Barron's should not have changed the title to "Mastering Portuguese". I believe the title and the back cover comments are very misleading. By the end of the course you will not be "mastering" the language, but you will have a very good grasp of the basic elements of the language and a good basis from which to jump into more advanced topics.
2) Even in a basic course like this a few topics should not be missing, among them: the verbal forms of common irregular verbs (like "fazer, dar, dizer, saber, ...") should be covered much more in detail, the imperative and conditional forms (very common in the day-to-day spoken language) are missing, vocabulary that is used on a daily basis (like road directions, colours, body parts, ...) is missing.

A final note. This is the FSI level I course for Portuguese, the level II (that should build up the vocabulary and the grammar to the level required for diplomats!) has not been published by Barron's, but by Audio-Forum (which is also publishing level I at a much higher price than the Barron's edition). Some of the topics that I consider "essential" have been probably left to the level II course, which is called "Portuguese Programmatic Course, Level II" and is not really a bargain in terms of price.

This program is the best one I have found on the market. It is filled with topics used daily by speakers. Its pronunciation has made my Portuguese totally recognizable in Brazil; its cultural inclusion is of great value. Overall, I know of no better way to learn Portuguese here in the United States, short of speaking with native speakers. I only wish there were another program to go beyond this excellent basic training.

This program is very effective in grounding you in the fundamentals of the Brazilian Portuguese language, especially if you already have a strong base in another Romance language. If you are a motivated language learner, "Mastering Portuguese" will help you acquire the skills necessary to carry on simple conversations in practical situations....but you will not possess "total fluency", as the program states. There's no way to become totally fluent with simply a book and 12 tapes. Don't get me wrong, I think this is an awesome method of learning Brazilian Portuguese if you are dedicated, but it isn't sufficient to become "totally fluent" in the language....no book/audio program is. But this is the best I've seen yet. One other thing...one of the biggest complaints of this program from the other reviewers is that it does not cover the true future tense--well if you're going to Portugal that may be a problem, but in Brazil it is NEVER used in speech and this program isn't really for European Portuguese anyway. You can find the second volume of the FSI Portuguese Course on multilingualbooks.com. My advice: work hard through the program, read news articles in Portuguese and look up the words you don't know, and watch the news in Portuguese (on the internet), and listen to BRAZILIAN MUSIC!!! I cannot emphasize enough how much listening and singing along to Brazilian music has contributed to my fluency in the language (Check out "Os Tribalistas", Marisa Monte, Caetano Veloso). But most importantly, find a native Portuguese speaker and practice, practice, and practice.

I have found this program to be very useful. I am halfway through the book/tapes and can use rudimentary Portuguese already. It builds well on what you've learned already and the tapes are extremely helpful -- I use the tapes much more than the book. Strong points are: sentence structure, verb tenses, phraseology. Weaker points are: vocabulary. There is no vocabulary list or dictionary style listing of words -- so I needed to buy that separately, for looking up unknown words. I highly recommend this course.