Books to Study Portuguese

Students often ask what the best Portuguese textbook is. There are several good books available. The best one for you will depend on your goals and your learning style. Here are a few books to consider.

 Ponto de Encontro is excellent for those students who want to learn the grammar rules. It is one of the only books with extensive explanations of verb tenses, how they work, and when they are used. Ponto de Encontro teaches Portuguese from Brazil and from Portugal. In each grammar topic and exercise, the book explains the difference between the two versions of Portuguese. It is a dense book. When it comes to exercises, however, I prefer to work with other books or you can get the Ponto de Encontro Brazilian Activities Manual for additional exercises. Ponto de Encontro has a good website with exercises that you can do online and get the correct answers as you work on them. You do not have to buy the book to access the online program.

 Falar Ler Escrever Português is very good for exercises that use repetition. It does not give you grammatical explanations; it shows you how to do something and then it makes you practice with exercises. This is for Brazilian Portuguese. Each chapter starts with a dialogue or short text. The CDs are sold separately and contain all the dialogues and texts. This is a great book for students who want to do lots of straight-forward, repetitive exercises. In my opinion, repetitive in this case is a good thing and does not equate to boring. You need repetition to learn a language. The exercises will gradually build on vocabulary. For even more exercises, there is the Caderno de Exercícios.

For students who are already conversational, I recommend Colloquial Portuguese of Brazil 2. This book has several dialogues that use everyday informal language. It also brings concise grammar points and you can buy the accompanying CDs to listen to the dialogues and practice oral exercises. This book was published in 2008, so it has up to date language.

 Bem-Vindo: I like it a lot; it has interesting texts and good exercises. It is a fast-paced book. I recommend it for Spanish speakers and intermediate students. The Caderno de Exercícios (exercise book) is also very good and offers additional practice exercises.

Ultimate Portuguese: Each chapter begins with a dialogue followed by its translation, short and to the point grammar explanations, and a few exercises. I like the dialogues and use them a lot in my classes. The grammar explanations are objective, which is good, but in my opinion they are not enough. The exercises are few and not very interesting. The dialogues and accompanying CDs are the main strength of this book. Most of the chapters are Brazilian Portuguese; a few chapters bring Portuguese from Portugal. Please note: There is a paper back edition that comes without the CDs and another edition with the accompanying CDs. I suggest you get the one with the CDs.

Street Smart Brazil students benefit from all these books and more. We use our own workbook with original content. In addition, we have all the books above in our library and we know them very well. We are able to pair students with the right books and we allow students to experiement with them. This way, our students can decide what is best for their learning.

For an updated list of good materials and more, visit StreetSmartBrazil.com/store

I hope that helps :)

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