Swedish: A New Basic Course (Foreign Service Institute Language Series) [Paperback]

Foreign Service Institute (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: Audio-Forum (December 19, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0884325628
• ISBN-13: 978-0884325628
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,709,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Swedish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars something's missing, September 6, 2004

By 

JohnnyE "Texas Progressive" (College Station, TX USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Swedish: A New Basic Course (Foreign Service Institute Language Series) (Paperback)

The book looks very comprehensive and well written. But when you get the book you discover that it was designed to be used with a set of 8 (or is it 15) cassette tapes or a CD. You might think that they would be included since the book isn't cheap and the publisher is something called Audio-Forum. Unfortunately that's not the case and the tapes are never even mentioned in the item description. If you want the tapes you would need to fork over another $199 and the CD $239. They should at least tell you that the course isn't complete without the necessary tapes and that they're extra.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly Spoken Swedish, March 21, 2006

By 

Alexander Goncharov - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swedish: A New Basic Course (Foreign Service Institute Language Series) (Paperback)

This book is targeting the conversational skills and listening comprehension using 8 cassettes as stated in the book. If you go for the new SFI course with 15 CDs I believe it will be the same material as in this book. I have only purchased the book, which gives excellent account of everyday Swedish, presented in a dialog covering a large variety of situations. The book has 16 units: Getting around; Meeting people; Family and occupation; Seeing sights; A place to live; True and false; At the office; Shopping for clothes; Eating in a restaurant; Getting ready for an Evening Out;
(Nations, Languages and Nationalities);Social Gathering; Travel to a land; On the island ön; Holidays and tradition; Sweden today. The most important in using this book is to get someone who speaks the language (otherwise you have to buy cassettes or CDs). Even if your Swedish friend is not a teach, the book is so well thought that you just have to follow the given material and learn idiomatic expressions (Swedish patterns) so that you can use them naturally on the spot.
Ideally you need an instructor, but even recorded dialogs repeated with a pause in between for you to pronounce the phrases after the speaker is still a less painful method of memorising the patterns. This course is similar to an older course "Spoken Swedish" by William R. Van Buskirk and Fritz Frauchiger, which comes on 24 cassettes, huge amount of basic dialogs, the new SFI course is more compact and somewhat reorganised version of "Spoken Swedish", highly recommended, because you get extra examples of every day Swedish with good pronunciation on the tapes and it is less expansive than new Basic SFI course with 15 CDs.
The bottom line is get this book without cassettes if you have a friend who can help you with pronunciation, or go for the largest available course "Spoken Swedish" by spoken languages.

1 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must buy, February 19, 2001

By 

German Dominguez (Capital Federal Argentinha) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swedish: A New Basic Course (Foreign Service Institute Language Series) (Paperback)

The Comprehensive Program is the ultimate in spoken language learning. For those who want to become proficient in the language of their choice, the Comprehensive programs go beyond the Basic Programs to offer spoken-language fluency. Using the same simple method of interactive self-practice with native speakers, these comprehensive programs provide a complete language learning course. The Comprehensive Program is available in a wide variety of languages and runs through three levels (thirty lessons each) in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. At the end of a full Comprehensive Program listeners will be conducting complete conversations and be well on their way to mastering the language.