Colloquial Swedish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

Rating:
Summary: Helpful but not for a Beginner
Review: As a new student of Swedish, I bought the book and tapes as a suppliment to my course materials. The book is helpful, but not as easy to use the Ake Viberg grammar reference - which facilitates more rapid reference to grammar rules. The Holmes courses emphasis on everyday spoken Swedish is however welcome. I was very dissapointed in the tapes - the British narrator is quite dry and somewhat annoying with his constant "listen to the speakaa" phrases, and I was expecting more drilling on verb usage as opposed to just listening to conversations and reading. The tapes main function I guess seem to be to get the student used to hearing rapidly spoken Swedish.

Rating:
Summary: Good price. easy to use.
Review: Except for the introductory pronunciation section, the book is fairly easy to use. The first five or six lessons are a bit slow. After that, it gets more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Not so helpful
Review: The material gets across, but it is rather haphazardly organized; you learn how to say "plastic handle" long before learning any object pronouns. There seems to be an effort to translate new vocabulary as it is introduced, but this is not entirely successful; I found myself repeatedly having to look up words in the reading sections that were not included in the vocabulary lists following the readings. Also, the book makes the unwritten assumption that the reader is British, which produces surprisingly many inconveniences for an American reader. All things considered, one can certainly learn beginning Swedish from this book, but not in a particularly efficient or utile manner.