Score:
1 2 3 (4) 5 6 7 8 9 10
“Four outta ten!”
Pros:
short explanations and good examples; overall decent organization; good coverage of beginner-intermediate Portuguese grammar topics; low price
Cons:
no exercises; unclear relation between some sections and chapters; missing a crucially needed look-up system for reference use
Sue Tyson-Ward’s Portuguese Verbs and Essentials of Grammar promises an in-depth look at the basics of verbs and other points of grammar to beginning and intermediate students.
The book is divided into two halves. One half covers “verbs”, while the other takes on the “essentials of grammar”. Chapters in each half touch on some grammatical topic, like “Perfect (Compound) Tenses” or “Adjectives and Adverbs”, for example. The sections within each chapter then divvy up specific points, like “The Future Perfect” or “Comparison of Adjectives”. There, you’ll find short, one-to-four sentence explanations of the point in consideration, followed by a number of Portuguese examples with English translations.
A few comments about this way of structuring a grammar course. The relation between the sections and chapters isn’t always clear, which it must be for learners. “Perfect (Compound) Tenses”, for instance, begins by teaching how past participles are formed, but doesn’t clearly teach, step by step, how past participles play into constructions with the verb ter to create perfects. The author only offers a quick line telling you this is so.
Another point where I take issue with the course: lack of practical application exercises. No exercises means you can’t hone your grammar skills with this book. You just get to read about grammar, not practice it.
All that leads me to think of the book as an at-hand reference guide rather than a lesson book. In that case, you’ll pull the book out when you need to refer to some Portuguese grammar topic. Well, we come to another problem. To use this as a reference guide, you’ll need a sturdy way to search for and find topics. But the table of contents is too skimpy and the index far too short to make this a powerful grammar reference. The “Verb Index” doesn’t even give page, section or even chapter numbers.
The main contents of this book do provide a decent overview of the major points of Portuguese grammar, particularly verbs. And for such a decent overview with abundant & clear examples, the price is right. Still, it’s lacking things that other reference guides I’ve reviewed here have in spades, such as Barron’s 501 Portuguese Verbs