Customer Reviews

Portuguese Complete Course: Basic-Intermediate, Compact Disc Edition (LL(R) Complete Basic Courses)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I quite like this course for a number of reasons: the incremental approach; the realistic dialogues; the grammar notes and verb conjugations; the cultural points; and the letter writing. I am using it together with another course, Manuela Cook, Portuguese, book ISBN 0658015796, and with audio ISBN 065801580X. This is also a complete course with similar features, a very effective graded method, and coverage of Brazilian and European Portuguese. I would say that Living Language and Manuela Cook's courses are ideal partners. I am using the two in parallel and progressing steadily.

SEE UPDATE IN 3RD PARAGRAPH. :)
I speak fairly good Spanish as a second language, and am preparing to spend a few weeks in Brazil this summer. With my Spanish background, I'm getting through this audio course fairly quickly. For each lesson, I first use the book and tape together to make sure I understand what they're saying. Then I listen to the tapes on the way to and from work, and sometimes before going to bed. I tend to focus on about 3 lessons at a time. Right now, I'm on 9, 10, and 11, and I'm starting to preview Lesson 12. I still go back and listen to earlier lessons, though. And I make flashcards for words I'm having trouble with.

It's hard for me to adjust to Portuguese pronunciation. (My mouth keeps wanting to pronounce it in Spanish.) I especially appreciate the fact that they model different Brazilian pronunciations (probably regional or simply differing from person to person). The progression of material is very logical. The content is quite practical, also. I have other Brazilian Portuguese audio & computer programs, but this program is the most helpful.

UPDATE July 2004: Okay, I'm back from Brazil now.

After working with this audio program for about 2 months, I got frustrated that I wasn't able to speak. (My Spanish kept interfering.) So I decided to change my attitude -- My new goal was just to UNDERSTAND what was being said to me in Brazil. So as I worked with this program, I focused mainly on auditory comprehension. Of course, I practiced my pronunciation while working with the program also.

Amazingly enough, this attitude shift not only decreased my frustration, but it proved to be effective. When I got to Brazil, I understood enough to be able to deal with taxis, restaurants, hotels, etc. But I also was able to make the shift from Spanish speaking to Portuguese within a few days. I was only there a little over 2 weeks, but few Brazilians could believe I knew so much "just using a book and tapes". (That amused me, but I was also happy to keep hearing that my Portuguese was decent.) I could carry on casual conversations fairly well, not just "tourist talk."

It helped a LOT that I spoke fairly good Spanish before working on Portuguese. The grammar and the vocabulary have a lot of similarities.

In Brazil, I used two speaking strategies: (1) using Portuguese I actually knew, and (2) using Spanish that might be similar to Portuguese (altering it at times according to some common patterns that I picked up from this audio program). In understanding what people were saying to me, these three strategies helped: (1) recognizing Portuguese I actually knew (which took some practice learning to actually recognize it in real life conversation),(2) guessing that words that sounded similar to Spanish words meant the same (or at least similar) in Portuguese, and (3) working my brain really hard to guess the meaning of everything else to fill in the gaps where I didn't know what a word or phrase meant. It was HARD WORK! My brain got tired. But it was also FUN to be able to move about fairly freely on my own.

And Brazilians were very patient with my Portuguese.

After returning from Brazil, I can still strongly recommend this audio program/book.

I'm 13 of 40 chapters in, and am disappointed so far.

My summary:
The CD:
- Worthless on its own (so far) as it is entirely in Portuguese with never a translation. So you need the book in front of you to read along. I find trying to both read and cognate words and listen and cognate pronunciation at the same time impossible.

- The CD speakers talk quickly (at native speaker speed) and never repeat phrases, so if you miss something, too bad. I would go with the Pimsleur CDs if you are interested in listening in the car or train.


The Book:
- The beginning of the book is kind of odd - for 7 chapters, it consists of vocabulary lists and small phrases. Later on, it does get into word roots and conjugation.

- The translation is often not literal nor consistent. For example, on page 58, 'com licenca' is translated as 'if you'll excuse me' instead of 'with permission' or 'with license'. This makes it harder to parse the phrases into their components. I feel that it helps you learn how to build sentences when you understand the components and how they are assembled - not just how to parrot phrases.

- There is no phonetic pronunciation in the text, so if you are unsure, you need to cue up the CD! As well, some of the most important phonetic issues are ignored - like the ending of a word in 'te' is often pronounced 'che', 'm' has an 'n' sound, 'de' is often given a swallowed 'dge' sound, etc.
- And lastly - a minor issue - is there is a typo in the section about pronouncing the letters - saying the letter 'j' the same as the letter 'i' - instead of 'jota'.


Once again, I'm only 13 of 40 chapters in, but so far I am not impressed!

BEST SHORT COURSE I have found to date for BRAZILIAN Portugese.
Anyone find something they like better? Let me know please.
Great sound quality, relevant content.

fyi - per living language, "... the Complete Course is only Brazilian in the audio portion and both Brazilian and Continental in the book. In case you decide to continue on into more in-depth Portuguese, our Ultimate Portuguese has about 9 lessons out of 40 that are Continental (while the rest are Brazilian)." Also, Portuguese In-Flight is only Brazilian.

Portuguese Complete Course by Living Language is a first rate language course which has gotten me good results. The method is sound and effective. The written material is also of high quality and is useful. However, I travel frequently both to Brazil and Portugual and have found this course to be somewhat limited in its scope, lacking idioms, sentence building techniques, tenses, and such.
To remedy this, In addition to Portuguese Complete Course, I have purchased and used Behind the Wheel Portuguese by Language Dynamics with great success.
Behind the Wheel Portuguese compliments and fills in the gaps, adds sentence building techniques, idiomatic folk expressions and lots of tenses and interesting and immediately useful material that gets you soundiing like a native speaker right away.
Portuguese Complete comes with a wonderful text which I also found quite useful. Behind the Wheel Portuguese has no written material and works fantastic in your car or anywhere.
Together they spell a winning combination. My outstanding results speak for themselves.

I was looking for a system that I could use in the car while I am commuting everyday. This is great for repetition and accent, however, without looking at the book, I can only guess at what they are talking about. I do speak Spanish, so the words that are similar to Spanish I can understand, but if I didn't, it would not be usefull at all.

Speaking a foreign language is all about repeating sounds... this course will have you doing just that!! Get it!!!!!

you have got2get this! it's fast, easy and you'll be speaking Portuguese soon! It has you repeat sounds, and unless you have a short attention span (like me) the quizzes are really easy.

The reason this gets 2 stars even, is because it seems like a good deal: book + CDs + dictionary, something that would usually cost somewhere around $40-$50.

The "coursebook" is ...<strike>crap</strike> not very good. It's so small, as to "fit in your pocket," but I don't really want to keep it in my pocket: I have a backpack, or even a table, or a clean spot on the floor. It's too small, and there doesn't seem to be a real structure to the book. The first couple "lessons" are just lists of words, illustrating how different sounds in Portuguese are spelled (words which, I assume, we're supposed to memorize cold, without any way to use them except in "hey, did you know the Portuguese word for ____ is ____ ??")

When the lessons start, (I mean, where they spit words at you without justifying it as examples of Portuguese pronunciation), they're just as pointless. The vocabulary lists are haphazardly thrown together, following a sequence like the words are used in a sentence:

onde - where
há - is there (there is)
Onde há ... ? Where is there ... ?
um - a
hotel - hotel
Onde há um hotel? - Where is there a hotel?


To call this an over-glorified phrasebook would not be far from the truth.