Falar Ler Escrever Portugues Text (Portu [Portuguese]

This Text book is part of a complete language course, together with the seperate Exercise Book, the sepearate Vocubalary (Glossario) and the Audio CDs for the Text book and the Exercise book. Of course that adds up to a high price, which is totally justified for the high quality the books and CDs offer. It is the most complete Brasilian Portuguese language learning course I have found. This combination of books and CDs is NOT designed for self-learners. The course is basically made up into two sections. Lesson 1 to 10 cover the basic structures. Lessons 11-18 concentrate on specific themes which brings you to an intermediate level. I have had lots of good learning in the class room becaus the Brazilian teachers feel very good about the absolutely idiomatic use of the language, i.e. it's really how people speak in Brazil! The stucture in the Text book is very clear and includes all the important themes of Brazilian Portuguese, together with very useful and concise information on brazilian culture. The Exercise book is an integrative part, because here some of the exercises are available to work over grammar and vocabulary that are scarsely covered in the Text book. The speed of the speach on the Exercise CDs is faster and closer to how Brazilians speak. There is only one weak point, that your teacher will have to provide the Grammar teaching, since the entire book is in Brazilian Portuguese and there are no real explenations on grammar.

Given the significant differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese, most Portuguese L2 textbooks are based on one of the two standards. This particular book is designed as a beginner's introduction to standard Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as used in printed newspapers/magazines and national TV newscasts. Grammar and usage topics that are peculiar to European Portuguese, e.g. second-person verb forms and certain rules for placement and contraction of pronouns, are avoided altogether, even though they may be still found in Brazil in formal literary language. Conversely, nonstandard grammar that is nevertheless common in educated colloquial spoken BP, e.g. the "você/te" combination or the use of the subject pronouns "ele"/"ela" as direct objects, is also ignored. That is a refreshing departure from the recent trend in Portuguese L2 textbooks to emphasize colloquialisms over so-called "correct speech". The drawback, however, is that certain dialogues in the book, although using basic vocabulary, may often sound a little bit too formal from a native speaker's point of view. In a classroom environment though, standard grammar notes as presented in the textbook may be easily supplemented by appropriate instructor's remarks on colloquial usage whenever it differs from the standard language (once the student has a good grasp of the standard, learning colloquial variations is fairly easy). Overall, I strongly recommend "Falar, Ler e Escrever Português" for customers who are serious about learning proper Brazilian Portuguese, as opposed to the substandard language/grammar found in other textbooks.