30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ainda o melhor sistema para voce estudar, December 17, 2002
Finally, a usable Portugese language program. I live in Brazil about 3 months of every year, and I speak quasi-fluently. I find that this is an excellent refresher course to keep current. I also learned many expressions and constructions that I was previously unaware of their use.
I cannot tell you how many audio language instruction programs I have bought. I think I have purchased all of them on Amazon[.com] (for Portuguese, at least), and this is the first one I have found useful.
However, unless you have some background, or have listened to Pimsleur I and II, it is NOT for beginners.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Effective Approach to Language Acquisition, April 30, 2005
If you're 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 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. I recently completed the second course, and can recommend it to anyone interested in reviewing and continuing to learn Brazilian Portuguese.
The premise is simple: each thirty-minute lesson consists of a series of conversations between a man and a woman. 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 - 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, but 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.
The most 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 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!
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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good but socially biased, January 28, 2005
I've just finished the 3 bands of Brazilian Portuguese and many other Pimsleur language programs and would like to share a little bit of my opinions. This legendary program has already got thousands of positive confirmations and to a large part I also concur. So here what I want to share is to provide some different views.
Basically the Pimsleur programs assume the listener to be "White American male of managerial stage, who has married and have couple of children" In almost every language Pimsleur offers will begins with an instruction like "Imagine an american man wants to strike up a conversation with a xxx women" and the xxx could be replaced by either Polish or Vietnamese or whatever. This presumption would somehow be balanced while you progress through the program by introducing the women subject scenario, but you will still discover from time to time that all the social contacts the Pimsleur program teaches you would confined into only top class of a society. Your wife / husband will be either a diplomat or bank manager, your son works in a multinational corporation and your daughter studies in University in Chicago (of course there are lots of Universities in Chicago). What most impressed me is that all the Brazilian partners in Pimsleur only play golf and tennis rather than soccor!!
I think the pricing policy of the publisher has already set that the customer would be rich. So no doubt that the language it provides fits these presumbly customers' need. If you are not a diplomat or multinational CEO who has business trips often, then you probably would find out in the end that the language situations it constructs are so far from your life experience. Nevertheless the Pimsleur still has it value. It trains your listening and pronounciation in a way that I havn't seen so effective in other materials. But I believe it worth about a hundred bucks or so, in stead of nearly thousand in 3 bands totally. I would recommend you to search in second hand market if it is possible.
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