|
The course is going to teach you a few hundred words, and to really be proficient you probably need to know three or four thousand plus verb forms. The drawback is its expense. In that case you could get a gold membership at Audible (which gives you 12 credits) and get both levels 2 and 3 for $[.]. BUT, you will not be able to understand much of what native speakers are saying to one another (if you are lucky you will usually be able to understand what the conversation is about). The reason is that when you finish this course you will still have a very limited vocabulary. Each level of this course costs 6 credits. That gets you 24 credits to redeem for audio books.
So you can get the entire course for about the price of buying level one on CD and still have 6 credits left over to buy other books. Moreover, I think most serious students could probably skip level one (you may have to spend more time on level two, but everything in level one is reviewed there). I think this is probably the best available audio course in Portuguese. You would be able to get around in Brasil, (check into a hotel, ask someone to call you a taxi, tell the driver you want to go the airport, etc). And you will be able to express a fairly wide range of ideas to people who speak only Portuguese. And you are not going to be able to have sophisticated conversations with native speakers. So when you finish this course your best option for continued learning is probably to speak as much as possible with native speakers and learn from them and/or to find some Portuguese reading material and use a dictionary to look up the (many) words you don't understand. It would be nice if there were levels 4,5, and 6 of this course focused on building vocabularly, but there are not.
Here's how to get around that: Go to Audible.com (Amazon's books on tape store) and sign up for a one-year platinum membership for $[.]. That is not a knock on the course, and I don't know of anything better out there. (Cancel the membership afterward if you don't want it to renew).Here's what to expect after you go through the course (all 3 levels). You are going to have a solid foundation in pronunciation and an intuitive feel for some basic grammar. It's just that learning a language is not so easy. This course will get you to a place where those methods will be useful.
The trick is to work on the lessons daily and speak out loud - loudly. I have tried many different methods to learn a foreign language and Pimsleur has the best approach I have yet found. (I do it in the car to/from work so I am not disturbing others, although I probably look like an idiot).Delivery was prompt, within a week. They start out simple and build from there. Prior material is reviewed in several subsequent lessons. The only minor wrinkle was that they said it shipped by UPS, but it actually shipped Fedex and they gave me a Fedex tracking number.I haven't tried Rosetta Stone yet, but am holding off because it will tie me to a computer and because of the expense. Another plus, Pimsleur can be used in the car and on an MP3 player.
The voices are easy to understand.I am on the last lesson (#30) today. I think these tapes are great. They're very thorough, and I can carry them with me since they don't require a computer. Occasionally the conversations are really repetitive and so the learning rate seems a bit slow, but I suppose that's the nature of learning a new language. I think the vocabulary and phrases they teach will be fairly useful when I need to try the language "for real".I have not tried any other language learning products (like, for instance, Rosetta Stone) to compare.
I've ordered many CD's and I've got to say that so far the Pimsleur are the best. They are easy to follow and after the 30 minute session I do learn something usefull. Expensive but worth the money.
Learning to speak (and understand) Portuguese is like learning to speak French -- whatever you read mostly sounds nothing like how your will pronouce it.Portuguese is a lot like Spanish -- maybe 40-50% of the words are the same or highly similar. I also have the spanish lessons. Others have mentioned the 'Portuguese in10 Minutes a Day' book, but I would like to add another -- 'ConversationalBrazilian -- Cortina Method'.
I have some spanish in my past education, and whereas most spanish ispronouced like you read it, Portuguese will just plain mess with your headon the same words. If Amazonis out, check some used booksellers or other online sources -- do NOT paysome ridiculus price more than $5.00 used or so for it.I cannot recommend this method of learning more highly. BUT, when spoken it is closer to 20% similar.Thus, if you want to be understood, it is practically impossible to getthe 'nasal' sounds right without this type of program.
This smallish paperback is filled withrepeatable phrases that are highly useful in many situations. I have found that where I could do a Pimsleur Spanishlesson in 2 to 3 sittings, it takes more to remember all the Portuguese --mostly because I have to retrain my brain to not say it in spanish.This all being said, the Pimsleur sets have virtually no reading to compliment them, meaing once you see written Portuguese, it may not quiteregister because of the vocalized differences between print and spokenword. Thus, one should have some written material to go with it to geta feel fo what you are saying.
I listen in thecar, walking the dog, as I go to sleep -- wherever (I have the lessons ona very portable iPod 8G nano). And wereI to consider another language, I would turn to Pimsleur first.
|
