Semantica Method: Brazilian Portuguese is a conversational language course divided into 36 lessons. Uniquely, the “lessons” are all videos spread across 2 DVDs. The learning process involves watching a video series of filmed conversations and interactions between Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Like many audio methods, Semantica’s program doesn’t involve written exercises or significant amounts of reading. Limited explanations, in the form of teaching sessions, build competence in vocabulary and grammar as you progress.

I haven’t posted a full review of this language learning video program, since I haven’t acquired a full copy to review. Please give your feedback below, particularly if you’ve used this course to learn Portuguese.

In Pois não, Antônio Simões delivers a Portuguese course with a “basic reference grammar”. It’s different from your typical Portuguese course, as it targets learners who already speak Spanish. Although there are great differences between Spanish and Portuguese, the author capitalizes on the mass of similarities between these two Ibero-Italic languages to speed up the learning process. The theme and style are reminiscent of Simões’ other effort, Com Licença!: Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers.

In this book, you learn grammar, syntax / sentence structure, vocabulary and conversation skills through modular lessons. Lessons include explanations of a variety of language topics, along with drills and exercises. Throughout the text (actually, in both books mentioned above), the writer consistently draws comparisons between Spanish and Portuguese, highlighting each language topic.

Since I haven’t acquired a copy of this book to read thoroughly, I don’t give this book a score or a full review. If you have any recommendations related to Pois não, please post your comments below.

Talking Brazilian is a text book with 2 audio CDs by Mário Perini. The book aims to help learners pronounce, speak and read Brazilian Portuguese with native confidence. Like , this same author’s treatment of grammar, Talking Brazilian introduces students to the way Portuguese is actually spoken in Brazil instead of the standard formal language as taught in Brazilian classrooms.

I haven’t rated this book, as I have not acquired a copy to review. If you would like to recommend this book to others, please post your comments here or send a copy to be reviewed by contacting this site.

Cons:
for travelers to Portugal only!; very basic conversational phrases relevant to meet & greet, dining and where places are – beyond this, you’re out of luck; the interplay between the audio & booklet isn’t 100% intuitive and could use some tweaking

Teach Yourself One-Day Portuguese furnishes you with an audio CD and a short little booklet, with the goal of instilling in you 50 essential European Portuguese words and 20 ways to combine words into phrases.

You’ll start with a dialogue between two native Portuguese speakers, whose words and phrases are broken down and listed in the booklet (3 pages). Then, you’ll find the 50 words you’ll need to remember, and the 20 sentences you’ll memorize.

After that, the booklet challenges you with a “one-day quiz”, asking you how to say a selection of phrases. The author’s questions are pointed and relevant to situations you’ll find yourself in (“ask someone if the shops are far”). There’s a scoring and self-assessment grading guide, along with a certificate of completion on the last page.

If you’re off to Portugal and you need to gulp down a handful of essential phrases quickly, One-Day Portuguese provides a cheap, focused way of doing just that. If you arm yourself with other resources – a phrasebook or an introduction to Portuguese conversation & grammar – you’ll be ready to start speaking fairly quickly.

Auditory learners will get the most out of this course, but if you have the time and money, you might opt instead for a more robust audio course, like Pimsleur or even the less comprehensive Michel Thomas Portuguese. Such a lesson course often helps you learn more while memorizing less by rote.

Cons:
European Portuguese only (but sometimes covers Brazilian use without really explaining what’s going on); organization only so-so, especially study/grammar points; quality of activities and short length of dialogues may put off some learners; explanations often miss the mark, failing to connect the dots or explain grammar as well as they should

Sue Tyson-Ward’s Teach Yourself Beginner’s Portuguese attempts to break down and teach the basics of Portuguese to new students over the course of 19 lessons. The book & CD combo expose you to an array of conversational and grammar topics.

The book’s format is typical of a TY course (or most other conversational language courses). Chapters start with dialogues, then give grammar or language topic explanations over a few pages. You’ll do paragraph-long reading exercises, as well as practice activities. Readings, dialogs, explanations and activities are often interchanged, which adds variety at the expense of consistency.

The course opens with a short crash course in pronunciation, which is enough to get the ball rolling if you’re learning Continental European Portuguese. The CD or cassette tape follows along, pronouncing a few dozen words so you can get an ear for the language.

Each dialogue is fairly short, but believable. Dialogues and readings are quick and disjointed, so expect to use them for repetition practice, not for any engaging immersion to Portuguese. Unfortunately, not all dialogues are covered on the audio CDs.

The explanations of grammar and language topics sometimes throw verb tables or grammar rules your way without proper introduction, other times offer adequate instructions. Mostly, it’s disappointing that they build on each other mildly and bear minimal connection to the chapter topics or overall course organization. What’s worse, they’re sometimes misleading or conflicting.

Exercises give you a chance to do the typical fill-in-the-blanks or translation & repetition more than anything else. At times, you’ll stray from that formula by, say, picking out what’s going on in a cartoon drawing, or filling out a crossword puzzle.

The end of the book has answers to activities, a Portuguese-English vocabulary glossary and short index. The table of contents also lists chapters by title and summarizes the main points in each chapter.

If you’re looking to ease into conversational Portuguese, and can withstand some of the faults I found in this course, Teach Yourself Beginner’s Portuguese is one way of getting through the basics. But, personally, I recommend other of the many courses available to you.

Cons:
European Portuguese only; the barrage of pronunciation and conversation drills have no setting or context; exercises and explanations always point back to repetition drills; two-way conversation drills suggest this course is designed for partner or classroom use

Barron’s FSI Mastering Portuguese wraps the Foreign Service Institute’s language training program into a book and tape course for beginners. Over the course of 25 lessons (units), students will read, hear and repeat countless variations of words and phrases until learning to speak basic Portuguese.

Each unit begins by asking you to repeat along with the audio as it reads aloud words and parts of words. The text in the book focuses on troublesome sounds. For instance, one section asks you to practice a variety of words ending in -om, taking care not to pronounce the “final m” the way you would in English.

Then, you’ll charge ahead through conversation dialogues. These start out as simple, two or three line exchanges. Later, the exchanges become more intense. The book includes many of them, with many variations on a single theme to make sure you’ve nailed down a specific facet of Portuguese conversation.

Units spend some time introducing and explaining grammar topics, but you’ll always sense they play second fiddle to the ever-present conversation drills. Practice exercises are here, too, but they often involve repeating lists of Portuguese sentences, or creating slightly different versions of a single phrase. Additionally, some sections improve your Portuguese vocabulary building skills, encouraging you to recognize words related to English, avoid “false friends” (cognates with different meanings in English and Portuguese), and so on.

These lessons have a decent table of contents, listing units and section names and numbers, but no index. You’ll also find a Portuguese-English vocabulary glossary at the end of the book.

As a language learning course, Mastering Portuguese is either a repetitious and routine or exacting and practical coverage of conversational Portuguese for beginners. You’ll skip some important grammar points and miss out on more creative approaches by taking on this lesson program. Yet you’ll have plenty of practice with a wide range of Portuguese words and phrases, with nuanced variations of each. Dedicated students looking to gain some real conversational abilities in European Portuguese will appreciate this course. You certainly won’t be afraid to hear or read Portuguese anymore, and you may be a good deal more prepared to speak it.

Cons:
listen & repeat approach to learning phrases may tire students; exercises are routine and simplistic; juggling both Brazilian and European in one course can be trouble for some learners; long vocabulary and phrase lists to memorize; organization and pacing is only so-so; audio only reads parts of the book, and all in Brazilian (only a con for learners of European Portuguese)

Living Language’s Portuguese Complete Course offers a book and CD package for beginners. The repetition-heavy lessons stress conversational words and phrases, then ramp up to tougher reading, listening and understanding skills.

The pronunciation guide in lessons 1-4 reads through a series of words. The rest of the lessons focus on introducing more and more vocabulary and phrases in lists. By lesson 30 or so, you begin to read fuller sentences.

The book explains chunks of grammar along the way, and gives more information about how to pronounce Portuguese throughout the lessons. Explanations of grammar and short exercises break up the flow of progressively harder vocabulary in later lessons.

Small practice exercises test your skill allong the way, but are rather simple (often “fill in the blank”). For all the material covered, sections tend to repeat lists of words and phrases or embed them in basic dialogues. The organization of material is haphazard enough to make some sections a real challenge or a real bore. In the end, most students will have a gone through lots of material, but still struggle to understand the big picture, especially when it comes to grammar.

The CD reads straight through in Brazilian Portuguese (even though the book tackles both European and Continental dialects), and at a normal speed. It’s meant to be used alongside the book, allowing you to hear what’s written there. The audio portion doesn’t last long, which means that auditory learners won’t get much repetition or well-paced help.

A couple of extras round out this lesson course. The appendix has a summary of grammar, complete with verb tables and overviews of key points. There are also examples of written letters and e-mail in Portuguese. In addition, the set comes with a separate Portuguese & English vocab dictionary. I have already reviewed that dictionary on this site.

I enjoyed the free-flowing and complementary nature of the audio CD-book that build on each other. I like the progression from reading words to phrases to dialogues and letters in Portuguese. I’m curious to see if such a barrage of exposure to progressively tougher Portuguese could be turned into a more immersive, less cumbersome experience.

As it is, the Portuguese Complete Course is too scattered to give you a really organized understanding of beginning Portuguese, but it does cover a good chunk of material in the written guide, and manages to provide a full introduction to spoken and written Portuguese. Few basic courses cover this much territory. Still, auditory learners will get more from Pimsleur’s Brazilian Portuguese (they offer a separate European version, too). If you want to stick with a Living Language product, I prefer the structure of Ultimate Portuguese.

Cons:
sense of progress marred by ambiguous presnetation of material; explanations get dense or problematic at times; too tough for beginners, but many sections just review for intermediate learners; questionable organization of material; a bad course for fresh beginners and students who can’t find their own way without extra guidance

The author of Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese flexes her grammatical muscles in this attempt to present Portuguese grammar to self-taught learners pursuing a “complete understanding” of the language.

Teach Yourself Portuguese Grammar begins with a glossary of grammar terms (noun, verb, etc… all in English with English examples). Then, there are some notes about Portuguese spelling, punctuation, accent marks and stress.

Beyond that point, the book is taken up with a thorough presentation of all the basic and intermediate points of Portuguese grammar and sentence structure. It even manages to cover some advanced topics. As a learner, I know your next question without you asking: but how well does the book teach Portuguese grammar?

Over the course of 45 lessons (46 total minus the spelling unit mentioned above), you will read and reread sections that explain a range of grammar topics. Some topics deal with specific words (like por and para), while others focus on general patterns (like the inflected infinitive of verbs).

Within each chapter, topics are explained in the “grammar in focus” section. These explanations can be dry, dense and textbook-like. What’s more, they may leave out crucial material that beginners. Despite the book’s coverage of both Brazilian and European Portuguese, examples of the two aren’t always distinguished carefully, and some of the information (especially about those ever-tricky Portuguese verbs!) should be checked for accuracy against native speakers of each dialect.

Fortunately, the explanations are supported by well-placed Portuguese examples. Every “grammar in focus” topic has plenty of these sample sentences to digest with a Portuguese-English translation of each one. Exercises that follow offer variety and stay focused on the topics just presented. Some chapters offer a “grammar in context” activity after the exercises, which includes real-life Portuguese examples to test your understanding.

The book ends with a short list of Brazilian and European vocabulary differences, a table of regular verb endings, a table of irregular verbs (the same one found in Manuela Cook’s Teach Yourself Portuguese, and answers to the practice exercises. The book has no index, but the table of contents is thorough enough for later look-ups.

The order and choice of Portuguese grammar topics presented in each chapter is the toughest feature to accept. Related topics (such as definite articles, indefinite articles and nouns) are often grouped together, but the progression between chapters is ambiguous. It’s best if you make a separate learning plan for the grammar topics you need to learn or enhance, and refer to those sections in the book.

If you’re a later beginner looking to tighten your knowledge of Portuguese grammar, especially your abilities in the written language, I think you can learn a lot from this book. Its balance between explanations, examples and exercises, its coverage and variety are all commendable, even if the author’s way of organizing and explaining the material fails to impress.

Pros:
covers a lot of grammar; exposure to wide array of written Portuguese in ten lessons; good extra material; will have you reading large amount of Portuguese by the end; can be completed in three months if dedicated; lots of practice with the written language, including translation; audio cassettes help with pronunciation (Continental/European Portuguese dialect)

Cons:
expects a lot from beginning language students; tries to present Brazilian and European variants, but always favors European Portuguese; offers little learner-oriented guidance; long vocabulary lists to memorize; exercises are mainly translation drills without much variety; focus on grammar and vocabulary out of context is more rigid than a conversation-driven method

Hugo Language Courses’ Portuguese in Three Months promises that you’ll end up with a working knowledge of how to write and speak Portuguese after ninety days of hard work.

And the work is hard for beginners, unless you were fortunate enough to study another Romance language in the past. After the letter-by-letter guide to their “imitated pronunciation” system and a page of basic phrases to memorize, you’ll launch into ten lessons covering nearly every aspect of foundational Portuguese grammar. You will also be expected to keep up with numerous vocabulary lists (few too long, but quite a few without any context). You are expected to finish with the ability to read a story, a news article, an excerpt about Brazil and Portugal, and two letters.

Lessons are divided into numbered topics, most shorter than a page. Topics tend to revolve around grammar and language functions (like “the imperfect tense” or ” ‘if’ clauses”). Verb, pronoun, noun and article tables with bold endings and a handful of usage examples dominate these sections. Usage examples are Portuguese sentences demonstrating a particular grammar topic, accompanied by English translations.

Dialogues and readings stress repetition and exposure, while exercises emphasize translation. Apart from certain fill-in-the-blanks and questions to be answered in Portuguese, the exercises involve translating a list of sentences from English to Portuguese.

The book ends with reading selections, lists of Portuguese idioms and expressions, a good verb appendix with irregular verbs, answers to exercises, an English-Portuguese vocab glossary, and a very short index of language topics.

Portuguese in Three Months takes on a chunk of what meatier, more traditional grammar courses cover over a longer period of time. It builds up a language learning system of static exposure, memorization and practice, with only terse explanations to assist you. If you’re commited to working with this course, you certainly can master a good amount of Portuguese in a short time. But its rigidity will prove troublesome for less determined students (or those searching for more guidance). That’s especially true if you prefer a more contextualized conversational approach to learning Portuguese.

Cons:
if you don’t get the pronunciation symbols, this book offers nothing new; missing some phrases I’d want to use; I question some of the topics they address and others they don’t for Brazil; just a survival phrasebook; Brazilian only (a negative if you want to learn European Portuguese)

Outside of the quick pronunciation guide and tips at the beginning, Say It Right in Brazilian Portuguese does one thing: it lists Brazilian Portuguese phrases and gives a visual representation of how to say them.

This phrasebook represents Clyde Peters’ attempt to apply his pronunciation key to the Portuguese of Brazil. In this system, vowels are circled, simple consonants are capitalized, syllables are divided by hyphens, and accented syllables take a mark on the vowel. You can see an example right on the book’s cover with the word olá! (“hello!”).

Outside of this pronunciation system, the book is what you’d expect from a Portuguese travel phrasebook. There are sections for health, shopping, getting around, and the like. There are “phrasemaker” pages that help you combine the start of a phrase (“I would like to go…”) with possible options for ending it (“to the bank”, “to the hotel”, and so on). A very short English to Portuguese dictionary (glossary) lists words with the book’s signature pronunciation key. The last page has a quick index of topics, and the inside front and back covers double as a reference guide for pronouncing the symbols in the key.

If you don’t understand its somewhat unique symbolic pronunciation system, Say It Right in Brazilian Portuguese won’t appeal to you. If you do, it’s a decent survival Portuguese phrasebook. Either way, I’d prefer hearing real speakers on audio CDs or in person to decoding imperfect symbols (IPA is more accurate, for example). It’s not “the fastest way to correct pronunciation” as it claims, at least for most of us, but it might do the trick for your most basic phrase needs.