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.

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:
exercises require repeating and assimilating but without much guidance from the course; some topics are useless or outdated; no explanations of tricky points (hardly any explanations at all); grammar is too terse for anything but quick look-up and reference

Conversational Brazilian Portuguese: The Easy Method in 20 Lessons intends to teach you Portuguese through hordes of back-and-forth conversational phrases. The idea is that these snippets of mock dialogue should illustrate key language points as you progress the course. Conversations become increasingly more difficult as you go on, building on previous points.

The course has two main sections – the larger conversation lessons that make up the bulk of the book, and the shorter Portuguese reference grammar that follows the lessons.

Each lesson starts out with a few dozen basic phrases to practice (the first chapters also include some vocabulary words), with Portuguese on the left hand side of the page and English translations on the right. This is followed by a prolonged “exercises” section, which is actually the heart of the lesson. Each exercise starts with a bold Portuguese sentence, with English written below it. The sentence is always some interchange (like “How are you? – I’m fine”). Below that phrase, there are three to six very similar phrases for you to practice.

“Practice” here means repeating along and attempting to understand. This type of language drill is the basis of the “Cortina Method”. Practice this way for sixteen lessons, and you’ve completed the course.

The grammar section after the lessons is terse, methodical and full of tables, including regular and irregular verbs. It’s a quick way to reference individual grammatical topics, but it’s not a study guide or grammar lesson in itself. I wouldn’t even consider it an introduction to Portuguese grammar, since it’s more of a short collection of basic grammar topics.

A short but decent Portuguese-English vocabulary interspersed with alphabetized language topics, and thus doubling as an index, ends the book. As well as the clumsily integrated index, the course has a detailed enough table of contents to get a good sense of the layout of the course, and to search through the book later on.

If you’ve got a knack for figuring out how languages work from conversation exchanges without any intervening explanations, this is a good introduction to Brazilian Portuguese. Even then, certain topics and expressions will seem dated or hardly useful. If you get the free CD or cassette, you can listen along, repeat and assimilate.

For most students, though, I think it’s better to use these Portuguese lessons with a Brazilian speaker for structured conversations, or maybe as the backbone of a classroom course. In either case, I recommend purchasing or borrowing supplementary materials to help you with grammar, pronunciation and more real-life conversational language.

Cons:
sometimes uneven pacing; European (Portugal) Portuguese only; quick answer pauses might annoy students who need more time to think; students who have difficulty getting in to the instructor’s and native Portuguese speakers’ banter will struggle; no experience in writing the language means some students will have trouble visualizing word formation techniques

The late Michel Thomas presents us with his method tailored to Portuguese with the Michel Thomas Method: Speak Portuguese. The goal of this course is simply to get you to understand as much European Portuguese as possible as fast as possible.

This language learning method pinpoints word building techniques as the key to your linguistic success. If you’re able to understand how to build Portuguese words, phrases and sentences out of component parts, you can read any basic material in Portuguese, even with a very limited vocabulary.

The course contains 8 CDs of all-audio lessons. So, is it of the same ilk as audio-only methods like Pimsleur? Well, in its use of audio-only and the way it structures audio exercises, it’s fair to say that it is. But the Michel Thomas approach is quite different from Pimsleur.

In Michel Thomas’ Portuguese lessons, a teacher and native speakers engage each other in what sounds almost like a radio program. Throughout the course, the instructors address their audience (you) rather casually, with British accents, a touch of humor, and both helpful and fanciful linguistic musings. In many ways, this is the closest you’ll get to working with lively instructors rather than just listening to native speakers drill you with phrases and dialogues.

The course attempts to engage you directly. Along the way, you’re expected to follow along in Portuguese word building exercises. You’re even expected to do a bit of linguistic problem solving. The focus of this problem solving is to get you to understand patterns. Because of this technique, you’ll conquer what seems like complicated material early on.

I mentioned linguistic pattern-forming (what we in the biz call “analogy”). For example, you might learn that the Portuguese ending -ção is like -tion in English, so Portuguese words like situação and conversação are translated “situation” and “conversation”. You’ll be asked to form new words with that ending (how might you say “station”?).

During the audio exercises, the CD track will ask you to say something in Portuguese, beep, pause for an instant, and then give you the correct response in Portuguese. This is, I suppose, the best option for an audio learning environment. Still, the short pause isn’t enough for students confused by the exercise or those who take a bit longer to answer.

Unfortunately for Brazilian learners, this course is geared towards the European dialect. Still, if you like the method, the dialects are generally similar enough that you’ll be off to a good start, even if you’re headed to Brazil instead. If you enjoy audio courses, but aren’t looking to learn European Portuguese, try Pimsleur’s Brazilian courses instead.

I have an overall positive impression of the course after using it. I think that the instructive back-and-forth audio will definitely win over some students, and will even work for most. It’s great for auditory learners, especially if you’re looking for an experience obviously led by a teacher. I noted a few of the reasons I hesitate to consider the course perfect (see my “cons”), but I don’t see why it couldn’t be the best choice for some beginning learners.

Cons:
Brazilian Portuguese only (a “con” for European Portuguese learners); these first eight lessons are especially basic; auditory learners should skip this and move up to the more complete Pimsleur courses

Pimsleur’s goPortuguese contains the first 8 lessons of the Pimsleur Comprehensive program for a lower price. These lessons lead you into the “full” version of the course. This short, very basic course is a good way to sample the Pimsleur method to see if it works for you. However, if you think Pimsleur does work for you, I recommend that you skip to the more robust Conversational or Comprehensive versions instead.

goPortuguese contains 4 CDs with the eight lessons, but also gives you the MP3s in case you find that more convenient. It also comes with a 160 page “audio-book” that covers some of the basics of Portuguese grammar, but this booklet doesn’t stand out in itself. The all audio lessons are the star here.

I’ve done an in-depth http://portuguese-language-learning-reviews.nativlang.com/?p=129 Score:
1 2 3 4 5 (6) 7 8 9 10
“Six outta ten!”
Pros:
engaging, easy to use phrasebook approach; good pacing; audio complements booklet; attractive, lightweight package
Cons:
hard to search for specific information (words and phrases); for beginners only; makes no attempt to approach to conversation or grammar; Brazilian only (which is only negative if you’re traveling to Portugal)

Despite its flaws, Speak in a Week seems like a smooth lead-in to a more full-fledged Brazilian Portuguese conversation course. If you plan on learning more of the language, buy this reasonably priced package with a heavier-duty course like Pimsleur’s Comprehensive Brazilian Portuguese or Living Language: Ultimate Portuguese.