Customer Reviews

Teacher's Manual for Norsk, nordmenn og Norge 1: Beginning Norwegian

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This book is the best I have come across for learning the language. It begins with simple situations and continues to more difficult subject matter in easy to take steps. HOWEVER: Except for a few footnotes in English, the book is written in Norwegian -- instructions for exercises, grammar explanations, and all are in Norwegian. Of course this is a great help in itself.

There is an excellent Norwegian to English lexicon with the proper use of verb endings and noun usage and included for each verb and noun. In addition there are many examples of idiomatic usage included for various nouns, verbs, and prepositions.

I recommend it for anyone who is an intermediate student.

Starts with the simplest sentences, in Norwegian, and then progresses using hardly any English. No vocabulary overload, teaches grammer systematically and at exactly the right time in the student's development--not at all like the high school and college texts in German, etc, from which you got only confusion and stress. I took three courses using this book at age 42 (taught by visiting Norwegian women through The Norwegian Society of Texas, fantastic teachers all!) and within a year spoke Norsk as my second language (did 2-3 hours of homework each week, absolutely essential but requires 'motivation'). My German wife later erased all my answers (I wasn't happy!) and taught herself Norwegian as well over several years during our summer months in Norway. It helped to go there every summer for some months (for research and hiking). The book's weakness: colloquial speech is left out altogether. For that, see Sverre Kloumann's Learn Norwegian. We bought the three tapes for that book and my wife later used them extensively. One has the advantage that many Norwegian words are recognizable from English and/or German, but the grammer is extremely simple, like English (but more systematic), in contrast with Russian, old Norwegian, and German. Like the later three, though, the language is phonetic. Neither text teaches dialect words, a disadvantage, given that there are 28 major dialects and far more local ones, but the situation is not much worse in that respect than with German. For dictionary, buy Einar Haugen's Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok.

My mother bought this book at a major university bookstore. So... it must be well thought of... academically speaking. It teaches you vocabulary concurrently with grammar concepts and provides drills and examples to help you remember. The only way to begin learning norwegian. You will learn norwegian with this book. I recommend doing one chapter every two days. The only fault is that it should have word definitions in the back of each chapter. However, it does provide a glossary in the back of the book. For pronunciation, get some tapes. ....

After completing Hippocrene's Beginner's Norwegian and Teach Yourself Norwegian, I was in somewhat of a rut for quite a while. There really aren't any readily available intermediate Norwegian courses out there (that I could find). Listening to Norwegian internet radio, reading Norwegian newspapers, and watching Norwegian TV helps, but can be frustrating because it's a BIG jump from the elementary courses. I had a copy of this book lying around, but I assumed that since I'd completed several other Norwegian courses, I wouldn't get anything out of this text.

Boy, was I wrong. I'm about half way through now, and I can say that it is absolutely excellent. There is no vocabulary overload (a problem with most other language courses I have--and I have lots of them!), concepts are introduced and then constantly reviewed as part of later exercises (most books introduce a topic and you don't see it again... and of course, forget about it), and best of all, there are TONS of exercises (most other courses are pathetically skimpy with exercises).

In fact, the approach that this author takes is to give short dialogs and readings for the reader to analyze (containing new topics) and follows them with many, many helpful exercises. You sort of make connections and deductions as you go through the problems. It's a sort of "learning by discovery" approach--a very "active" learning style. It's written entirely in Norwegian (except occasional footnotes) and forces you to think. And like I said, once something is introduced, you are not allowed to forget it. It just keeps coming up. Of course, this approach burns a lot of paper up! The book is nearly 600 pages--most of it exercises. However... GUARANTEED that you'll remember this stuff with this approach! I think one reason that newer texts don't take this "active," exercise-happy, discovery approach is that they are too cheap! ...cut all the exercises out and save a lot of money in publishing cost... or cut it all out and call it an audio-based course :-)

Granted, I don't think this style of teaching will appeal to everyone. But it sure appeals to me. I wish I could find texts written like this one in other languages that I study. Also, I probably wouldn't recommend this book to a complete beginner. I think it might be a bit intimidating at first. But if you've gone through TY Norwegian or Hippocrene's Beginner's Norwegian, and you learn well visually, analytically, and by example, by all means give this book a try! Also, since the book is quite old, the audio is very hard to find. You should have the sound of the language in your head before starting with this book if you can't find the audio. I don't have it, but it's no disadvantage at all since the other courses I've done have quite a lot of audio.

An added benefit is that once you've completed this book, there is another more advanced text that follows (by the same author). Bottom line: for traditional/analytical style learners, this is THE book. You want this book.

There are (apparently) three separate books under this title. There is a text book (hardback), a teacher's manual, and a student workbook. I (foolishly) ordered the $25 version thinking it was the paperback version of the textbook - wrong. It was the teacher's manual.

The information on the web is misleading. This is not a textbook. This is a teacher's manual. I made the same mistake-- ordered it as the textbook.

Fairly necessary companion to the textbook. I am happy to have it, as it covers areas not covered in the text and reinforces what the text teaches. Definitely worth getting!

Maybe it's the class I'm taking...but I find Norsk, nordmenn og Norge to be one of the nicest language textbooks I've ever used. It's not fancy...not in color...but the lessons are clear...broken up into understandable chunks...and the book's refusal to use English...while daunting at first...eventually forces you to learn the vocabulary quickly. The class I'm taking also requires the workbook...which is a good complement to the main textbook. (There's a set of audio files available from the publisher's website that are also handy.)

The only minus? It's heavy. I hope Amazon eventually offers it in an e-reader format.