Customer Reviews

Pimsleur Portuguese I (Brazilian)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There's a significant amount of really bad language programs out there, but this isn't one of them. The money invested (at auction) has been indispensible. I'm living in Brasil now and I'm so glad I bought these. Just a few thoughts:

1) In addition to the program, here are some necessary books to buy: A good dictionary, 501 Portuguese verbs, and the Dover publication of Portuguese Grammer.

2) In regards to finding a good dictionary, I look at two words that are often confused in Portuguese/English. "Decepcao" in Portuguese means disappointment, but if it's a weaker dictionary, they'll translate it "deception" as it's so close to the English word. The other word "compromisso" means "committment" in Portuguese, but a weaker dictionary will translate it as "compromise" which is the opposite meaning, again because this is what it sounds like in English. When I find a dictionary that translates these words correctly, I feel confident about the other translations. I have the Larousse dictionary and while good, it does make mistakes as mentioned previously. Probably the better dictionary is the one that comes with "Living Language" but it's small and you have to buy the program that comes with it, a program I'm not crazy about (see next).

3) On other programs: The "Living Language" program is definitely not for me. Skimps on interaction and auditory elements, although the books that come with it are good. The Language Now computer program had me so stressed out in 10 minutes just trying to figure out the program. De jeito nenhum (no way)! I do have Rosetta Stone as well. I like parts of it, although I'm not 100% sure I'd buy it again. For me the word/picture association is good, but it just isn't stimulating enough. I get bored with it so easily. It's strong point is probably the vocabulary is more extensive. So if you can find it cheap it can serve as a supplement.

4) By far the best in my opinion is Pimsleur because it forces you to recall from your mind. You're not just recognizing words but you're forming sentences and responding to questions out of what you're learning. It's impossible to get through a program with your mind being idle and unchallenged. Yeah, it may be pricey, but I can study on my own time and I'm not hearing a classroom of foreign accents and picking up other students' mistakes. I'm hearing only Portuguese from a Portuguese speaker which trains the mind.

Hope this is somewhat helpful. Definitely Pimsleur is worth it. But again, complement with the books mentioned in Part 1.

This audio only lanuguage tutorial is highly effective. The course is broken into thitry 30 minute lessons plus two 'reading courses'. Each lesson gets progessivly more advanced moving from learning individual words, to phrases and finally complete sentences. I found the lesson length of 30 minutes ideal for learning on my commute to and from work each day.

In addition to learning and repeating stock phrases you are challenged to put together phrases and sentences from words you have already learnt but in unique combinations not previously tried. This makes you 'think' about what you are going to say rather than repeat by rote. This mirrors what you'll be doing when communicating to someone on your travels. This approach is key to eventually 'thinking' in a foreign language.

The pauses in the audio for you to respond can be rather short for the more unique and thought provoking phrases. As a beginner one still 'translates' before speaking. I'd like to see longer pauses for new material and shorter pauses for material you should know well. Pausing the CD manually is not appropriate while driving or doing some other activity.

This course is complete enough for an extended business or leisure trip. You will learn enough to get around as a business visitor or tourist in Brazil. It will not teach you enough to understand TV or radio or fast conversations. For that you will need to purchase Pimsleurs level II and III language program(s).

For the reviewer that said this course is too basic and you can go straight to level II. I totally disagree. If you are a TOTAL beginner this is the course for you. If you already have a grasp of the basics, then yes it may appropriate to jump to level II.

It's a shame that a decent phrase book is not included with the program, reading basic words is a requirement when visiting a foreign land. You will need to supplement this course with 'Portuguese in 10 Minutes a day' or something similar. Note that it's important to 7 or 8 lessons in this course before opening a phrase book. The sounds of the language are so different to what an English speaking person will expect from the written language, looking at the written word too early will encourage you to add a strong accent.

I found at the age of 46 I did not make progress at a pace I had anticipated. I certainly could not keep up with one lesson per day even though I studied twice a day. Younger students and those good at languages should have no trouble keeping up. I perservered, completed the course and I have started level II lessons. My friends in Brazil frequently comment that my Portuguese keeps on getting better. They are tickled pink that I am learning their language and all Brazilians I have met have been great in helping me with my Portuguese.

I am quite shy and tend to have a 'mental block' when speaking foreign languages (a fear of make a fool of myself I suppose). This course has given me the confidence to speak Portuguese in public with those fluent in the language, I know I can do it.

There are a few drawbacks to this course.
First and foremost it is conversational only (which is the intent I know). So you will need to get additional resources and help for written Portuguese. I suggest 'Portuguese in 10 Minutes a day'
Second, I was very disapointed on my trip to Brazil when I realized I didn't know how to ask how I wanted my steak cooked, and ended up with a medium-well done steak I didn't enjoy. This is basic stuff and should be included this series. Another reason to supplement this course with 'Portuguese in 10 Minutes a day', it has a really handy 'cheat sheet' on many things one might say at a restaurant (including the words for Rare, Medium and Well Done).
Thirdly the course needs an index. Sometimes I would realize that I had not adaqautely grasped something I learnt in a previous lesson. But which lesson? There should be a list of which words are introduced in each lesson to enable to go back and relearn something you didn't get first time. Short of listening to 3 or 4 thirty minutes lessons you have already completed you may never find what you are looking for. If you do this course at a desk I suggest you make your own index as you proceed.

Despite the flaws I noted here I can thourougly recommend this course to anyone contemplating a trip to Brazil or simply wanting to learn another language.

5 Stars Pimsleur!! It works!!

I ordered this course because I married a brazilian girl and knew that I would be vacationing in Brasil with her, etc. After receiving the tapes, I think I listened to the complete course 2 or 3 times in about a 3 month period. Since then, I have been to Brasil, and have had many opportunities to speak portuguese with my brazilian in-laws. They've all asked why I am the only gringo in the family that can speak portuguese! My "Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese Part I" tapes are now sitting on the shelf collecting dust, because I have moved onto "Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese Part II", which is the follow-up course to Part I. Part II builds on everything that you learn in Part I. I went to Brasil about 2 months after I finished listening to Part I. I was able to practice my portuguese in Brasil for 3 weeks. I called cabs, ordered food in restaurants, talked to the brazilians about os Estados Unidos (the United States), etc. I am very pleased with both Pimsleur products that I've purchased. I have to go now and listen to my tapes......I am going to Rio de Janeiro in 2 months!

The Pimsleur system is really wonderful. It is enjoyable, well-paced, and because you can tell you're making progress, it is self-reinforcing. I highly recommend it. Today I am on Portuguese II lesson 22, and already have Port III on my shelf ready to go. A few caveats, though:
(1) The "30-min per day" claim is misleading. I do cover one lesson per day as Pimsleur advises, but I need to listen to each lesson about 3 times to really feel that I've mastered it.
(2) I also sometimes review the previous day's lesson.
(3) For myself, it has helped to "cheat" on Pimsleur's audio-lingual approach (with a small Dover publications $. grammar book and a Port-English dictionary). In total, I probably spend about 2 hours per day on Portuguese.
(4) My neighbors probably question my mental stability, as I talk to myself while jogging or walking the dog!
(5) NOTE: A mistake I made was starting w the older Pimsleur comprehensive Portuguese tape set (16 tapes) for about $... created before they had the whole 3-level series. Nothing wrong w it, but it isn't quite consistent with I-II-III (that is, it's not the same as Portuguese I). If you think you want to do I-II-III, that is what you should buy.

Some reviewers have complained about the price. But really, when compared to the value of the time you'll invest, or the cost of a reasonable alternative (like college tuition) the price isn't bad. If you put in the effort, this product works.

If you are serious about communicating orally in a foreign language, you'll want to consider the Pimsleur Language Program. My own experience with the program has far exceeded my expectations: after learning two foreign languages in high school and college classroom settings, I decided to tackle Portuguese on my own, and was told to purchase the first "course," which consists of sixteen CDs and a short reading booklet. After having completed it, my feeling is that I've made more progress speaking the language over the course of a month just by listening and responding to the thirty hours of recorded conversations than I made in a year of formal classroom instruction.

The premise is simple: each thirty-minute lesson consists of a series of conversations between a man and a woman, and occasionally you're asked to anticipate the response of one or the other and in that way participate in the conversations. By introducing new vocabulary and sentence structures slowly, and reiterating old material in each subsequent lesson - and above all, by frequently asking you to REPEAT ALOUD the native speakers in order to make the physiological connections required to reproduce the language and make sense of it by yourself - you are supposed to feel comfortable speaking in a range of more-or-less basic social situations by the end of the first level. Granted, the program may not work for everyone, although one of the advantages it has over a classroom is that you are able to set your own pace, revisiting older lessons for review ("live," rather than from notes) as many times as necessary until you feel ready to proceed. Thus even the linguistically impaired can feel comfortable learning an admittedly daunting language.

I believe that the most significant and effective aspect of the program's innovation is that it introduces the written word only after several lessons of introduction to the pure articulated sounds of the language. The idea behind this method seems is to give primacy to what is said and heard, so that learners in difficult speaking situations are prevented from trying to translate the written word instead of generating sentences from actual prior conversations. It makes sense given that speakers of language all over the world, including the United States, begin to speak well before learning to read and write (if in fact they do the latter at all). For me, the approach has worked brilliantly.

That said, if learning composition or trying to read in a foreign language rather than communicating with other Portuguese speakers is your primary concern, you should know that this program may not be for you, or at the very least you would want to consider a good textbook for written exercises to complement the Pimsleur program. I can say without hesitation, however, that Pimsleur beats hands down the other audio programs currently on the market - Living Language and Teach Yourself don't touch it. Especially for a language where books of verbs, good dictionaries, and even decent textbooks are few and far between, it's fortunate that Pimsleur has included Portugues in its growing library of audio courses. Best of luck speaking!

Pimsleur is the most painless way to learn the basics of a language and to get over the initial fears of speaking. It's the only language learning method I've found where I can stay motivated working on my own--no painful left-brain memorization or grammar, just lots of repetition until all you need for working travel Portuguese is tripping blithely off your tongue!

I went through both Portuguese I and II in Audiofy bookchip format, and I did my half hour a day while I did my cardio at the gym. At home, I also learned a little grammar from the _Portuguese in Three Months_ book. That was enough for me to go to Brazil and have slow conversations with people.

Pimsleur is pricey, but if you shop around on the web you can find something reasonable--doing a web search for used Pimsleur will usually do the trick.

Pimsleur, in my opinion, is hands-down the best way to start learning a language. If you want to study Brazilian Portuguese further, I would recommend googling and buying Sonia Celegatti Althoff's _Portuguese Grammar_ book, which will give you answers to most any question you'd ever have about Portuguese grammar and will also explain a bunch of colloquialisms in spoken Portuguese that Pimsleur and others do not cover. For instance, for the longest time I had no idea what my boyfriend was saying when he frequently used the term "a gente," which I thought maybe meant some sort of agency. I found out that this is a colloquial term for "we."

Pimsleur won't explain things like that. But it will give you an accent that people will be able to understand, more or less, and that's worth a lot.

I've used this product and am now ordering it for my son. I had tried several others including the best known one and was struggling. When I got this course I was SO disappointed. It was ONLY TAPES. But I thought, "Oh well, I'll try it!" It was the best thing I did. There were no picture books with it and no text books. BUT IT WORKED!

very good if you are a complete beginner to portuguese. however, if you already know some portuguese, the material is a little repetitive and boring. overall, i would have to say that i recommend it.

I am a gringo now living in Brazil. I use most everything I learned from these tapes. If you want to sample it, buy the 8 lessons first. If you learn from it....jump right up to the big ones. You can get them cheaper off ebay. Pimsleur is the absolute best course for me. I tried alot of other audio courses and they didnt do what Pimsleur did. I would get a Portuguese/English dictionary or the Portuguese in 10 minutes a day book as a help tool. Same as all the other reviews...its awesome and works.

I bought these tapes about 10 months before I went to Brazil and slowly, at my own pace, went through the entire 30 lessons. I looked forward to doing them which I managed to do about 3X a week. I have a hard time learning new languages, but I thought this program was excellent. They forced you to think and repeat what you learned back in different ways. It was also a lot of fun. There are no real Portuguese classes around here, so this was great. One thing though, is that it helps to have some backround in Spanish to figure out how the language is put together. They don't really explain those details very well.
In Brazil, I was able to read things and pronounce them correctly, even though I may not have known what they meant. I was able to get my point across, although perhaps crudely. But I was not afraid to try to talk to people. And they really appreciated the effort. A Brazilian woman at the airport even told me I had "no accent" when I told someone the time, but she just didn't hear me talk enough.... One time I was able to call to the tour bus driver to slow down (in Portuguese) as he screeched around corners in the tour van scaring us gringos to death. It worked! All the people in the van thanked me later! I wish I'd had time to do the 2nd group of lessons and will do so if I go back. My advice is - go for it! ...