Customer Reviews

Quick & Simple Brazilian/Portuguese (Pimsleur Quick and Simple)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I thought the CD's were done very well and they DO help you learn the language. However, they really need to offer a book to compliment the CD's. Although you learn to say things and communicate with others speaking the language, there is no substitute for "seeing" the words they have you repeating. I often found myself hearing a word and thinking it was spelled one way only to find out later from a Brazilian friend that I was not even close to the correct spelling. Knowing how the words are spelled is very important, in my mind, to truly understand the language. Although the speakers are very clear on the tape, there is just no way to discern every little syllable and syntax of the sentences without an accompanying book! I wound up buying another book that I could reference which was helpful in putting a "picture" of the words together with the "sound" on the CD's. This made the language much easier to understand.

This tape or CD set is a nice introduction to Brazilian portuguese at a nice low price. You will learn the correct pronounication and, since vocabulary is introduced gradually with lots of review, you will not forgot what you have learned. Since it is all audio (no book) you can easily use this while driving. But you really don't learn that much material and will not be able to say more than some basic sentences when finished. Also, you will have no idea what the language looks like on paper - and when you do see it, you might be very surprised. This beginning set continues with a full 30 lesson Pimsleur series that is very expensive and not really worth it if the same rate of progress occurs over the 30 lesson series as with this set. I suggest you try this introduction to learn some basics, and then move on to other materials to build on what you have learned.

With already achieving fluency in Spanish, I bought this looking to get a beginning foundation in Portuguese for a cheap price. After the 24 hours it took me to go through the entire series with no problems, I realized this definitely wasn't the purchase for me. This is for people who want to go to Brazil for a week and say "where is the hotel, ma'am?" and not for people who actually want to learn the language. But if that's what you want, it should be satisfactory.

About a month before my trip to Salvador, Brazil, I purchased the Pimsleur CDs. I found them to be very effective in learning some important phrases in Brazilian Portuguese.

With the Pimsleur method of listening and repeating, the phrases were easy to learn and difficult to forget. If I missed a few days of practice, I still recalled most of what I had learned in previous sessions.

The content is presented in both male and female voices, and with slightly different accents. Native speakers were quite able to understand the pronunciation that I learned while using these recordings.

I recommend this product for the traveller much more than a phrase book, because it teaches the unique pronunciation of Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese looks a little bit like Spanish in writing, but much of the time the correct pronunciation is very different. You need to hear it in order to learn it.

This product includes the first 8 lessons of a much longer series. So while it is effective, it is not perfectly optimized for quick learning for the traveller. For example, it is not until lesson 8, the last provided in this product, that you learn the phrase "Where is the bathroom?"

Pimsleur purposely does not include written study materials with the recordings, as a feature of their learning method. Personally, I would have liked to see all of the phrases that I learned in writing.

This audio only lanuguage tutorial is highly effective. The course is broken into eight 30 minute lessons. 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. (It's not a good idea to drive an unfamiliar route while doing this course, you'll miss intersections!!)

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 a short primer and you will learn just enough to get around as a business visitor or tourist to Brazil. It will not teach you enough to understand TV or radio or fast conversations. For that you will need to purchase Pimsleurs more extensive language program(s). I wish they had taught one to say 'talk more slowly please' in this short course.

For the reviewer that said this course is 'bait and switch' for the more complete courses, I disagree. It's cheap, will get you around for a short visit, and if you decide you want to learn more comes with a $50 off coupon for the full course. Very reasonable IMO.

I completed the course in about 10 days. At the age of 46 I am somewhat suprised I learnt the language so quickly - I was resigned to the fact that I was probably too old to learn a new language. Early frustration with being unable to remember the very first phrase on the course for more than 5 minutes was eliminated by the teaching methods the course employs. By lesson 3 I never forgot that phrase ever again!! You have to be persistent. Someone younger or sharper than I should be able to complete the course in 8 days or less. If I can learn Portuguese from this course so can you!!!

It's a shame that a short 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 a phrase book. Note that it's important to complete 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 can thourougly recommend this course to anyone contemplating a trip to Brazil. In addition it's ideal if you are unsure if you want to fork out the money for the full course(s) and want to a trial run with this first. The full course(s) do include sections for reading Portuguese from provided words and phrases.

5 Stars Pimsleur!! It works!!

I thought the first eight lessons were great and really enjoyed learning from them. Based on that alone, I would have given them a 5-start rating. However, I became extremely frustrated and felt "tricked" when I looked up the remaining lessons and discovered they cost [a lot]... I felt like the inexpensive introductory lessons ... were luring you into buying their more advanced and overpriced products. I also don't understand why their CD-sets are almost 20% more expensive than their cassette-tape sets. I really want to learn Portuguese, but I certainly cannot afford to spend [that much money].

Dr.Paul Pimsleur's method of learning Portuguese is absolutely great! Instead of having to practice and repeat words over and over, or reading a difficult book, you learn by listening. Great to use while driving!

Dr.Paul Pimsleur's method of learning Portuguese is absolutely great! Instead of having to practice and repeat words over and over, or reading a difficult book, you learn by listening. Great to use while driving!

Sorry to be a sexist pig. I just need to visualize the words. This dawned on me as I began to study with the CD alone. (Retention=zero!).
If you are a visual person, use anything but this. Some men really "don't listen".

Probably would have rated it one star, but others have far less difficulty learning in this way. Women seem to learn much more quickly using auditory methods.

These intro sets in Pimsluer Method are basically priced to whet your appetite for their more costly full sets. I have to say that you will not go from zero to sixty with these simple sets. In general , as other reviewers have noted, this is a completely audio system , so you are never familiarised with recognizuing the written form of the language....you will definitely need a basic Portuguese beginners text to really functionally learn the language. Also a strong foundation in Spanish or another Romance language is going to be needed, unless your recall of gramatical entities such as infinitives, gerunds, past participles, preterite, future perfect etc. are well polished. I will say this , however, if you combine all the above with the full Three parts of the Pimsleur Program....you can arrive in Brazil and essentially hit the ground running.