Whether you’re moving to Brazil, have Brazilian colleagues, or simply going on a vacation, you may be ready to learn a bit of Brazilian Portuguese. But where do you start? There are many books and media tools for beginners studying Brazilian Portuguese, and most of them look pretty much the same. They all cover generic topics like introducing yourself, checking into a hotel, and going sightseeing; however that doesn’t mean that all Brazilian Portuguese books are created equal. Brazilian Portuguese: A Complete Course for Beginners is exactly what it promises – a complete course.
When you start to learn a language you can learn a few phrases to help you finagle your way around or you can understand the language you’re learning to speak. Brazilian Portuguese: A Complete Course for Beginners helps you to do both. You’ll learn all necessary phrases to help you have a basic conversation with Brazilians but you’ll also learn some very important grammar skills. The latter will help you build a solid foundation for really learning how to speak Brazilian Portuguese.
In the beginning of the book there is a short section “How to use this book”; while it may be tempting to skip over this, it is actually important to read over. It explains the breakdown of the book and how to get the most out of your lessons. Then you’ll be more equipped to study!
There isn’t anything that extravagant about the book, but it is thorough and gets the job done. Like most beginner books, each chapter starts with a topical dialogue. Immediately following is a vocabulary box. This is slightly different than other books which often directly translate the dialogue into English. The concept of giving a vocabulary box rather than a translation allows the reader to try to discover the meaning of each dialogue alone. Test your knowledge with the three-question comprehension quiz that follows.
After the dialogue, the book gives a grammar lesson. These lessons are short and to the point, without any exercise to help the student really internalize what’s been taught. If you are a teacher of Brazilian Portuguese and want to use this book with your students, then the short grammar snippets are a good place to spend some extra time. As a teacher, you can create some exercises, games, or practice sentences to see how well your students do. Without spending extra time on the grammar lessons, it’s really unlikely that your students will really retain the grammar information. There are a few exercises in each chapter, but there is not an exercise to correlate to every grammatical and other lesson.
You’ll learn all necessary phrases to help you have a basic conversation with Brazilians but you’ll also learn some very important grammar skills. The latter will help you build a solid foundation for really learning how to speak Brazilian Portuguese.
There is a lot of information crammed into one book. If you are a student studying with a teacher who can help you pace the lessons and build on knowledge rather than just fly through the whole thing. However, if you are studying alone, it may be tempting to just whiz through everything. If you want to eventually be fluent, it’s better to be slow and steady; it’s probably better to learn a lot about a little rather than a little about a lot.
Overall, this book is a great tool and can help you learn how to speak, read and write Brazilian Portuguese. It will take a little patience and it’s important to be sure that you don’t judge your progress by page numbers completed, but rather on your actual ability to thoroughly speak and understand Brazilian Portuguese.
