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Best courses for Brazilian Portuguese? | ||
Tags: Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| IowaHawkeye Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5914 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 1 of 5 12 December 2013 at 12:11am | IP Logged |
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Hi,
What're some good courses for Br. Portuguese? Also, I have downloaded the DLI Portuguese course, but I've been told the orthography is a bit outdated. Will this hinder me? What courses could I use in conjunction? How should the lessons in a DLI course be studied? I've never used one. PS: I do speak Spanish, but I think I want to approach Portuguese as though the two languages were not so closely related, so I'm not sure how I feel about the Spanish->Portuguese conversion type courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4084 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 5 12 December 2013 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
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I suspect that either a Senior Member or a Moderator will pull up some very interesting information from the archives of this blog. While you're waiting for their replies, about a year ago, I was interested in learning some Portuguese and came up with a few options. Ultimately, I did not pursue them, as I wanted to concentrate on improving my German. Nevertheless, I suggest that you consider the following resources. This might also spark a discussion.
FSI-LANGUAGE-COURSES.COM http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Portuguese a. FSI From Spanish to Portuguese This is an excellent explanation of the differences in pronunciation and spelling between the two languages. As you already speak Spanish, this would be a great place to start. b. FSI Portuguese Programmatic This course is very highly rated for beginners and it is designed for self-study. As you already speak Spanish, you might find the initial lesson units too easy, in which case, you need only move quickly forward to a level at which you find more challenging material. By my calculation, the cost of printing the books just about equals the cost of buying them. So, you could always just order the books from AUDIO FORUM, who are now under new owners and download the audio. Here is the LINK to AUDIO FORMUM http://audioforum.com/search/?lang=1&s=1&q=152 c. FSI Portuguese FAST This short course was designed to be taught in a classroom. However, as you already speak Spanish, you might find that it suits your needs. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS Yale offers some highly-rated basic courses with either CDs or downloadable audio files. I suspect that these are meant for the classroom. The LINK is http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/language_sub.asp?language =Portuguese PRENTICE-HALL: PONTO DE ENCONTRO Has good and not-so-good reviews on Amazon, but does include (for sale) additional material. I suspect that these are meant for the classroom. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131894056/ref=nosim/ mitopencourse-20 The audio files are at: http://lrc.wfu.edu/Ponto/labs/index.html The the student video file http://www.amazon.com/Student-DVD-Ponto-Encontro-Portuguese/ dp/0132330369 or: http://lrc.wfu.edu/Ponto/video.html exercise material http://wps.prenhall.com/wl_klobucka_ponto_1/ PIMSLEUR PORTUGUESE As you probably already know, Pimsleur is an all audio course for beginners. It has many strengths and a few weaknesses. LINK http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Portuguese-Brazilian A REVIEW OF SOME MATERIAL http://hackingportuguese.com/where-to-begin/ A VIDEO METHOD http://www.semantica-portuguese.com/ Good luck! Edited by Speakeasy on 13 December 2013 at 5:04pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5294 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 5 12 December 2013 at 1:23am | IP Logged |
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Good to see you took my advice on DLI and about how the various "from Spanish to Portuguese" type courses may not be the best bet. I think you'll be glad you did. Have another look at my links at the bottom of my post in response to your thread Brazilian Portuguese.
No, the DLI course's orthography won't hinder you at all if you also use other resources. The value of this course is in the drills, dialogs, readings and exercises in each lesson. It's quite thorough and free. I also used Pimsleur from my local library via an inter-library loan for help with pronunciation and automaticity. That being said, try not to focus primarily on courses. As a second language speaker of Spanish, you need to see and hear how the language is used by Brazilians outside of course-world. I also chatted on Orkut, used twitter, a private tutor via skype, skype language exchanges, listened to music and podcasts, listened and read the news, read widely, etc. Your Spanish advantage will be quite useful to you throughout your learning. It will be your ace in the hole. Podcasts: Café Brasil is one of my favorite podcasts in any language. You can download it for free in mp3 and it has a transcript for copying and pasting. There are 379 other half an hour podcasts in the archive. The podcasts are about varied topics intended to stimulate your mind. They are sprinkled with Brazilian music (also transcribed). Escriba Café is about history, presented in a podcast. I enjoyed the latest one about the history of Somalia. The text is also available, but you'll have to copy and paste it. Contemporary reading can be found in the form of "crônicas" can be found here: Crônica do dia. Tons of "crônicas about many different contemporary subjects to read and copy and paste to print to pdf. If you have a kindle, you can print this stuff to pdf, get the Calibre free open source software to convert the pdfs to kindle (or any other e-reader compatible) format and use the integrated Priberam Dictionary (monolingual) to make your reading much easier. Linguee is the best on-line bilingual "dictionary" out there, in my opinion. On Learning Brazilian Portuguese by member erikspen is quite useful with reading exercises and tips and links. DLI GLOSS- Global Online Language Support System has free reading and listening exercises from beginner level. Select "Portuguese". Boa sorte. Edited by iguanamon on 12 December 2013 at 2:10am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4084 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 4 of 5 13 December 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
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Hello again, Hawkeye
In addition to the material listed above, I would add the following: LINGUAPHONE PORTUGUESE The North American agent is Linguaphone U.S.A. (Elite Commerce). Although the courses are often listed at prices in the 400 $US range, the company frequently has sales with price reductions of 50% or more. Also, they offer "refurbished" courses that have been opened for display purposes, but have not been used, at substantially reduced prices. Personally, I find that these courses provide good value at the reduced prices, but that the regular prices are not justified. The Linguaphone Portuguese course comes in two volumes, one for the course material and another as a handbook of notes and grammar, along with 8 CDs of audio. While the emphasis is on the spoken language of Portugal, some of the audio was recorded by Brazilians to demonstrate the language as spoken in Rio de Janeiro. Generally speaking, the Linguaphone courses are fairly well-received. Here is the LINK to Linguaphone U.S.A. http://www.linguaphonelanguages.com/ LIVING LANGUAGE "ULTIMATE" PORTUGUESE Although Random House has ceased publishing their highly-regarded "Ultimate" series, copies are still available in bookstores and on the Internet. These courses take a very traditional, grammar-oriented, approach. As far as I understand, the course attempts to strike a balance between the European and Brazilian dialects. The course comes in one volume with 8 CDs, divided into two sets of 4 CDs. The first set of CDs (Set A) presents the lesson dialogues twice, along with pronunciation exercises for the first few lessons, and then a list of new vocabulary, whether used in the dialogues or not. The second set of CDs (set B) is, apparently, to be used while driving (a rather strange approach to the safe operation of a motor vehicle, in my opinion). Set B presents the lesson dialogues once and includes audio exercises that are based on the lesson material. When using the Ultimate German course, I converted the CDs to mp3 files and then regrouped the two sets of audio into one lesson unit as: Lesson-1, Set A, Set B; Lesson-2, Set A, Set B; etcetera. Prices are approximately 90 $US. Although the course is available elsewhere, here is the LINK to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Portuguese-Beginner-Intermedi ate-Book-Comprehensive/dp/1400021154/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= 1386940598&sr=8-1&keywords=living+language+ultimate+portugue se ASSIMIL PORTUGAIS This course is available only in French. While I am not a great fan of the Assimil method, many people enjoy it and find it very effective. It comes in one small, compact, volume and, generally speaking, includes 4 or 5 CDs. I suspect that it emphasizes European Portuguese. Prices are approximately 90 $US. Here is the LINK to the Assimil website: http://fr.assimil.com/ FINAL COMMENT In all three courses above, the audio is in the target language only. Based on my experience learning German with these methods, I would tend to say that Linguaphone is the strongest of the three and that Living Language and Assimil are more-or-less equivalent, but that their approaches are quite different one from the other. NONE of the three "spoon-feed" the student, who is expected to work very hard. Edited by Speakeasy on 13 December 2013 at 5:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4768 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 5 13 December 2013 at 8:57pm | IP Logged |
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Re: Assimil- there are courses for Brazilian Portuguese in French, Spanish and German.
They're listed as "Brazilian"- I'm nearly finished with the active wave of Brasilianisch ohne Mühe. It's not quite as charming as some of their other offerings, but it gives you a wide range of input to work on. I don't know if the Spanish-based course has the same audio, but it sounds like the OP would rather find an English-based course, which unfortunately Assimil doesn't provide. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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