Customer Reviews

Portuguese Memory Book: A New Approach to Vocabulary Building

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I have studied 4 languages beside Portuguese and purchased this book thinking it might be useful. Actually, this book uses a vocab learning aproach that incoorperates the sound of portuguese words with English definitions of those words in English rhymes. For example, "early" ("cedo" in Portuguese) might be presented as "SAY DO you want to call Dave, and be EARLY for tomorrow's parade?" Anyone familiar with language aquistion knows the most effective way to learn vocabulary is to define words in terms of images or vocabulary already aquired in the language. The idea of remembering a Portuguese word using English rhymes is silly and inappropriate for anyone seeking lasting mastery of the language. A real disappointment.

As a student of various Romance language, I purchased this book thinking it would allow me to learn Portuguese even more quicker, however, I was disappointed. The book uses mnemonics in order to help readers memorize words by using clever catch ryhmes, but instead of helping, it only confuses the student. I would pass on this series and any other books published by the University of Texas Press (e.g. "Simoes Com Licenca," etc..). Texas is a great place to learn Spanish, but if you really want to learn Portuguese, I highly recommend Georgetown University's "Travessia" series. It is an excellent book, audio, and video series that allows students to learn the language at an easy rate. Save your money and pass this book by!

This book is only about 100 pages, including a Final Exam and Glossary. So it doesn't go into that much depth as it is.

It's simply page after page of Portuguese words, their English equivalents and a couple sentences including mnemonic jingles to help you remember.

I bought the book about 10 years ago before I traveled to Brasil for the first time. Although I wouldn't say it's a waste, since you can learn some words this way, it leaves much to be desired as a complete language solution.

If you want to learn Brazilian Portuguese, the resource I found most helpful was the FSI programmatic course which is used by American diplomats. It's also the most comprehensive that I've found and extremely beneficial.

Since I bought every single resource I could find and immersed myself in them, I felt compelled to buy this book. But I don't feel compelled to recommend it unless you're like me and absolutely must cover all your bases.

This one won't help you all that much, but it won't hurt either.