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.

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:
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.

Ultimate Portuguese Beginner-Intermediate covers most imaginable daily conversation topics and nearly every aspect of basic Portuguese grammar in its 40 book lessons and eight hours of audio on CD.

Living Language imposes a standard format on its Ultimate series, so the layout of this course is similar to other Ultimate language courses: a dialogue, grammar, vocabulary list, exercises, cultural note, answers to exercises.

The dialogues fit the chapter topics – each one covers a snippet of mock real-life conversation, using progressively more difficult grammar, vocabulary and phrases as the units go on. The grammar notes that follow treat big-picture grammar topics (like how to use the verb “ter”) and conversation-driven ones (like sending letters, faxes and telegrams). Grammar, though, is presented in a one-off fashion, through individual words. You’ll learn all the imperfect forms of “pagar”, then all the forms of “gostar”, without being told that you’re learning the same endings for both. The sample usage sentences almost make up for this extra mental work.

Vocabulary lists mainly deal with terms introduced in the dialogue and related to the topic at hand. They can become long and cumbersome for your memory, though. These are followed by multiple-choice, matching or fill-in-the-blank exercises that mostly serve to tease your learning skills. The “Notas Culturais” (Cultural Notes) that end each lesson read similar to asides in travel books, and distract you from the course’s goals. Besides, how much do you care that “Barcelos, Portugal is famous for its pottery”?

The end of the book houses a short reference overview of Portuguese grammar, with thorough tables of pronouns, adjectives, regular verbs and conjugations of common irregular verbs. This is followed by sample written letters (ranging from business to friendly), short Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese vocabulary lists and an index.

The eight audio CDs contain two parts. The first one reads through the dialogues and the vocabulary lists, and is intended for side-by-side use with the book. The second part is a stand-alone audio series that covers all forty lessons in the course, including grammar sections, with English explanations and Portuguese examples. This last addition makes the course suitable for “on the go” learning.

All in all, I enjoyed Ultimate Portuguese’s conversational approach. Some of the drawbacks I pinpointed may seem like nitpicking to some, but others may be dissuaded from buying the course. The audio component and the overall lesson structure, combined with the useful grammar selections, make this a worthy recommendation in my opinion.

Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese isn’t an awful entry in the TY series, but it isn’t stellar by any means. Its chapters feel cut-and-paste as far as vocabulary coverage and conversational phrases. Very little material links these topics and makes them stick in the Portuguese learner’s memory.

If you decide to pursue this course, purchase the package with audio CDs and complete all the exercises. But the exercises and activities are limited in effectiveness. Even late in the course, simple fill-in-the blank exercises abound.

Grammar coverage is graded, but often introduces points about tricky words and phrases rather than presenting systematic stepping-stones towards a general understanding of how Brazilian Portuguese works. This emphasis on specific traps to avoid when learning the language could be helpful, but not at the expense of basic information.

If you’re traveling to Brazil, I highly recommend other programs for conversation (such as the all-audio Pimsleur) and still others from grammar. The main Teach Yourself entry (Cook’s Teach Yourself Portuguese) deals with both European and Brazilian Portuguese, but it’s much more thorough (abut see my review for certain reservations I had).

Overall, I’m ambivalent about Portuguese in 10 Minutes a Day. To be sure, the course comes in a simple, artistic and colorful package that begs you to write and rewrite vocabulary terms and phrases. It also covers the basics of simple word and phrase lists for modular situations (looking at a house, you’ll learn the words for shower and pillow). Yet these lessons miss the fundamentals of exposure to realistic conversational situations as well as the backbones of Portuguese grammar.

A few extras make the entire package a bit more attractive. The accompanying CD reads a lot of the vocabulary lists aloud, which is a great help to beginning students. On top of that, the end of the book provides you with vocabulary stickers to place on everyday objects, providing a concrete visual cue for learners.

You will come out of this course with more Portuguese than you started with, and you may have a delightful time as you learn basic Portuguese words. If your goal is to acquire a speakable understanding, perhaps the effort you exert would reap better rewards elsewhere – which tends to be the case for me. But if you’re an absolute beginner, this is a nice enough way to ease yourself into written and spoken Portuguese.

The For Dummies series faithfully showcases its wit and informality in this entry, and it does so while presenting us learners with relevant examples and believable snippets of realistic Brazilian Portuguese.

Each lesson revolves around a topic (like going to the beach), and grammar and vocabulary are presented somewhat haphazardly throughout the course. The book maintains a conversational focus.

The author takes up a lot more of the text than expected with facts and notes about culture, travel, geography and other concerns about Brazil. Suggestions for further study, 10 favorite phrases to impress your Brazilian friends (kind of salt and pepper for your speech), exercise answers and a good index end the book.

The CD reads off dialogs, conversations and phrases, and is best used when the book indicates. In other words, the audio is secondary in this course, which may hamper students looking to really polish their conversational skills.

While I applaud the attempt at more realistic Brazilian conversation, the book has its fair share of errors in spelling, grammar and some expressions. Certain teachers believe that mistakes can cost learners dearly in the beginning, so go in prepared.

All in all, it’s a good introduction if you’re looking to learn Brazilian Portuguese. You’ll need further exposure or at least other study material to get deeper into pronunciation, grammar, or more advanced speaking situations.

The Pimsleur language learning program is widely considered one of the most approachable introductions to a foreign language. Brazilian Portuguese consists of three courses with multiple discs full of audio conversations and phrases in each course. The experience is entirely audio-driven, since Pimsleur courses treat reading as supplementary to speaking.

The level I course introduces the basic conversational skills you’ll need to survive in Brazil (or Portugal, if you opt for the European version). Each of the thirty audio lessons builds upon the last, with the express goal of bringing you up to a basic conversational level by the end of the course.

If you listen to all the recordings, you will have been exposed to a decent range of Portuguese conversation and speech, and, if you’ve been repeating along, you’ll likely be able to get by in a variety of situations. This falls short of the ideal – interacting with native speakers – and lacks the anchor of grammar that some students prefer, but it works well for a great many learners who use this course to conquer the basics. You will have a controlled listening comprehension experience throughout the course, and a consistent exposure to the spoken language, from individual words on up to the bigger chunks of Portuguese.

Pimsleur offers three products to beginning and intermediate learners: Comprehensive (most expensive, featured above), Conversational (seen below) and Basic. Conversational Portuguese gives you the first sixteen lessons of the Comprehensive course. Basic Portuguese is stripped down to the first ten lessons of the Comprehensive course. If you’re going to commit, I recommend the Comprehensive or at least the Conversational package. The first lessons, especially, are rudimentary, and only cover some of the survival basics.

Especially if you’re an auditory learner like me, the higher price tag of this product does pay off. Don’t expect to come out with a thorough knowledge of the ins and outs of grammar and syntax, but do expect to have an ear for the language and a quicker conversational tongue than you would through reading grammar books or playing software vocabulary match-up games. If you already have some command of the language, I recommend jumping to the second series (Brazilian Portuguese II).