Rating: 
Summary: Great course for learning Brasilian Portuguese
Review: A lot of negative reviews on here feature the fact this course teaches Brasilian as opposed to continental Portuguese. I wanted to learn Brasilian so I Loved the course. There are other products which teach Continental portuguese pronunciation but few that teach Brasilian.If you do all the exercises and don't try to cheat, this course will teach you the fundamentals needed to speak, read, write and understand Brasilian Portuguese. Nothing will ever replace "immersion" for learning but this course is worth the investment if you are going to Brasil. Once you complete the course you will need to enhance your language skills by expanding your vocabulary but that is true in any language course. The more you learn the better you understand. For those wanting Continental Portuguese, this course could help you understand the written language and fundamentals but yes the pronunciation would be different in Portugal. I have used Continental Portuguese materials in learning Portuguese also. The variances claimed by the one reviewer is overblown but there are variances as there is in the English langauge (compare Boston, MA with Savannah, GA with New Orleans. LA, etc...) Overall it is the best Portuguese material I have found and I have bought at least 6 different ones.
Rating: 
Summary: A stroke of luck?
Review: Could it be that I'm the first person that bought something because of negative feedback? I've been looking for a tape pack to learn Brazilian Portugese and either they cost $300 or the cassettes don't translate to English(such as one that I bought). When I saw this item in the store, I was hesitant in buying it, because it didn' say anywhere that it was a Brazilian version (thanks to the brilliant packaging that gives no clue!) and I also didn't want to get stuck with another cassette like the previous one that was strictly in Portugese. I need something to listen to while on the road, so it has to be English to Portugese. It looks like this is it! Thanks to all for the tip!
Rating: 
Summary: A good beginning for learning Portuguese, but . . . .
Review: First of all, as some of the other reviewers have stated, this is Brazilian Portuguese (which is fine with me, since I was learning it for travel to Brazil). Secondly, since the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I will first tell you the practical results of a thorough study of the 12 cassettes and the book, including practicing all the drills, etc. I have taken 4 recent trips to Brazil, 3 in the past year, all after completing this self-study course. I attempted to speak only Portuguese whenever possible. I found that I was able to speak and read Portuguese quite well. In fact, several Brazilians complimented me on how well I spoke Portuguese. I was able to read the newpapers easily with a dictionary in hand. The bad news, however, is that I found myself largely unable to understand the spoken language. I will elaborate a bit later in the review. I'll now go into some of the technicalities of grammar, and it will reveal some of the ways in which this program is lacking. The program begins with pronunciation drills, which is fine. It then moves to simple declarative and interrogative sentences in the indicative mode. You then go on to learn the imperfect and the preterit. Astonishingly, the program never gets to the future or conditional tenses. The closest it comes to the future is sort of a substitute future, i.e., "I'm going to...," with which you can get by quite well and which we use in English, but not knowing the true future leaves one somewhere short of true fluency. As far as the conditional, i.e., ""I would...," I found myself totally unable to use it and had to turn to other books for this. This brings us to the subjunctive, which is much more important in Romance languages than in English, and which Portuguese speakers use in everyday speech. This program does not address it at all, so I had to turn elsewhere to learn this. You could get by using the indicative to state contrary to fact situations (wishes, etc.) and you will be understood, but you will be using bad grammar from a native speaker's point of view. The imperative is also skirted, but there is enough in this program to figure it out. The program is badly organized in many ways, some of them quite frustrating. There is no vocabulary, either at the beginning of chapters or at the end of the book. New words are introduced in the text as you go along. Thus when you forget a word, you have to leaf through the text to find it. The vocabulary is also quite limited, and I found myslef having to consult a dictionary constantly (which, I suppose, is normal when you're learning a language). One of the most infuriating things about this program is that throughout the book you'll come to a sction headed "Comprehension," wherein you will listen to a series of Portuguese phrases on the cassette, spoken at normal conversational speed, and are expected to understand them. The idiotic thing is that these phrases are not written down anywhere! Consequently, if you are unable to understand a phrase from the tape, as was the case with quite a few, you're out of luck! Several times throughout the book it says "consult your instructor," so this program was obviously intended for classroom use, in which case the untranscribed phrases would be understandable. I also frequently got the feeling that this program was Part I of a program for which a Part II was envisioned but never completed. I hope that I haven't stressed the negative excessively. This program is a good beginning, but that's all it is, and I suppose it's as good a place to start as any. I haven't given up on my goal to master Brazilian Portuguese, but for true fluency I'm afraid I'll have to turn elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Wrong book!
Review: I bought the "Mastering Portuguese" to teach my husband Portuguese. The BIGGEST problem was that when I opened the package, it contained a Korean book instead of a Portuguese book. I checked the audio cassettes and they were all Portuguese cassettes. I am having a really hard time to exchange the book and I would appreciate if someone could help me.
Thank you.
Ana
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, and easy to use!!
Review: I bought this program to learn Portuguese so that I could converse in my girlfriends home language. This course in no time helped me build my conservational base and allowed me the ability to speak and understand people from Brazil. I am glad that I purchased this program especially at Amazon's excellent price.
Rating:
Summary: Good Price, Excellent Tool
Review: I can't express in words how good this program is!!! It's the best, the best, the best in learning Brazilian Portuguese! I just wish the title stated Mastering Brazilian Portuguese! Then they could make another one that says Mastering European Portuguese just to make it clear. But this is a wonderful tool for someone wishing to learn Brazilian Portuguese and want's to learn how to read and write. I used this course in conjunction with my class in Portuguese at college and it has helped me extremely!
Rating:
Summary: Audio is Very Poor
Review: I have been studying Spanish for sometime now. The competitve learning-Spanish market has gotten me used to a certain level of sound quality, after purchasing an array of Spanish courses ranging from CDs, Cassettes, CD roms, and even downloadable mp3s. And I was expecting the same level of sound quality from a learning Portuguese course. I am very disappointed with the sound quality of this program. It sounds awful! However, if someone would take the time to re-record this course digitally, I would easily give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and easy to use
Review: I have found this program to be very useful. I am halfway through the book/tapes and can use rudimentary Portuguese already. It builds well on what you've learned already and the tapes are extremely helpful -- I use the tapes much more than the book. Strong points are: sentence structure, verb tenses, phraseology. Weaker points are: vocabulary. There is no vocabulary list or dictionary style listing of words -- so I needed to buy that separately, for looking up unknown words. I highly recommend this course.
Rating:
Summary: Brasileiro ou Português?
Review: I have never bought this book, nor shall I ever, thanks to the reviews that I have read about this book. I am glad that I found out before-hand that this is not really a Português language book, but really a Brasileiro language book with a false name. If I wanted to learn Brasileiro, and the book was titled "Mastering Brazilian Portuguese" I would give this book 5 Stars because it is by far the best book to learn Brasileiro. But since the title is "Mastering Portuguese" I give it 1 Star. In a way, it is False Advertisment. I really can't help but wonder how many people heading to Portugal and wanting to learn Português before the traveled, bought this book, learned everything in it, and then went to Portugal to find that they are speaking a totally different dialect than the Portuguese people in Portugal. It is sad really. The Publisher should know better. When I buy a book that is titled "Mastering Portuguese", I want to be able to learn Português, not Brasileiro. Thank you, Tnis Kopit BTW, my wife is Portuguese, and I am looking for a book to teach me Português so that I may hold conversations with my in-laws in Portugal in their own language. If there is a book just like "Mastering Portuguese", but teaches Português, and not Brasileiro, please tell me. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Course
Review: I study Capoeira (a Brazilian Martial Art) in California and have been frustrated by my inability to speak Portuguese. I've been using this course for about three weeks, and I am able to have simple conversations with my Brazilian Mestre (master teacher) and others who speak Brazilian Portuguese in my group (I'm only on the second tape). The book follows a logical and intuitive path, and from reading ahead a little bit, I feel fairly confident that my Portuguese will be decent by the time I travel to Brasil in 9 months.
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