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Swedish: An Elementary Grammar-Reader
This grammar-reader is based on almost twenty years' experience of teaching beginners the Swedish language and is reassuringly practical in approach. Miss Hird's aims are threefold: to provide a compromise between the traditional grammar-readers and the new textbooks which are not designed for beginners outside Sweden; to supply grammatical information and exercises and reading texts together for ease of reference; and to stimulate the student's interest in Swedish life, institutions and culture. The grammar part of the book is in seventeen lessons, each comprising a text in Swedish which Miss Hird has specially composed to include useful vocabulary and graded grammatical points upon which exercises (including translation exercises) are set for practice. The central theme of the texts is Stockholm, and attractive drawings illustrate it. To help the student, there is a full vocabulary list covering all the lessons, a brief summary of Swedish grammar, a glossary of grammatical terms, a check list of irregular verbs and a comprehensive index of the grammatical points covered in the book. In the reader part of the book, the texts chosen range from a short play by Strindberg to a sketch by Stig Claesson, one of Sweden's most popular contemporary authors. Each text is preceded by a short biographical and literary introduction and is followed by questions designed to test the student's comprehension and to stimulate his appreciation.
- GenresLanguageNonfiction
284 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 1980
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45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 15, 2009
When I began graduate studies in Helsingfors a few years ago, I was keen on learning Swedish. But as a native English speaker, it was difficult to find the right textbook for tackling the language on my own. The popular SVENSKA UTIFRÅN is meant for classroom use, while the Swedish volume in the Teach Yourself series is an absolute disaster. I was fortunate to discover Gladys Hird's SWEDISH: An elementary grammar-reader, which proved immensely productive for learning Swedish on my own. This textbook was published in 1977 and was long difficult to come by, but thankfully it saw a recent reprinting in paperback. Get it!
Basic Swedish grammar and lexicon is spread out over 16 lessons in a supremely easy to digest fashion. The text that introduces each lesson often tells the reader something about Swedish life and culture--useful for someone studying abroad without daily contact with the country (like me, over in Finland). I found the exercises at the end of each lesson sufficient for judging whether I had internalized the new material. There's no answer key, but you can't really learn Swedish without some native speaker with whom you can apply what you've learned, so have them check your exercises. Swedish has rather idiosyncratic pronunciation, so you'll want to find some audio material, even if it's just a few listens of whatever is in your local library, but if you are just starting out you don't need to supplement Hird's work with any other textbook.
The Swedish reader portion consists of five passages, i) August Strindberg's chamber play Den Starkare, ii) a review of Den Starkare by the TV critic of Dagens Nyheter, iii) "Diskaren" by Per Olof Sunman, iv) "Slå följe" by Stig Claesson, and v) "Våra vanligaste hämningar: Cary Grant-komplexet" by Red Top. These are a bit old now, but except for the Strindberg still contemporary Swedish, and you'll find that the textbook prepares you very well for them.
Even if Hird's course is priced rather highly (to be expected of Cambridge University Press), this may well be the best option for the autodidact.
Basic Swedish grammar and lexicon is spread out over 16 lessons in a supremely easy to digest fashion. The text that introduces each lesson often tells the reader something about Swedish life and culture--useful for someone studying abroad without daily contact with the country (like me, over in Finland). I found the exercises at the end of each lesson sufficient for judging whether I had internalized the new material. There's no answer key, but you can't really learn Swedish without some native speaker with whom you can apply what you've learned, so have them check your exercises. Swedish has rather idiosyncratic pronunciation, so you'll want to find some audio material, even if it's just a few listens of whatever is in your local library, but if you are just starting out you don't need to supplement Hird's work with any other textbook.
The Swedish reader portion consists of five passages, i) August Strindberg's chamber play Den Starkare, ii) a review of Den Starkare by the TV critic of Dagens Nyheter, iii) "Diskaren" by Per Olof Sunman, iv) "Slå följe" by Stig Claesson, and v) "Våra vanligaste hämningar: Cary Grant-komplexet" by Red Top. These are a bit old now, but except for the Strindberg still contemporary Swedish, and you'll find that the textbook prepares you very well for them.
Even if Hird's course is priced rather highly (to be expected of Cambridge University Press), this may well be the best option for the autodidact.
September 7, 2014
This is a fantastic find.
The book is set up in chapters, each increasing in difficulty. Each chapter starts with a passage relevant to the culture/country, followed by a list of definitions new to each chapter, then a few pages of questions related to the chapter.
The work of translating each passage is left solely to the reader, and the questions are intended to help the reader learn. Most of them, with a little thought, provide answers and tips to the rest of the questions.
Despite not having a list of answers to the chapter work, I definitely think it's a better resource than most language learning software.
The book is set up in chapters, each increasing in difficulty. Each chapter starts with a passage relevant to the culture/country, followed by a list of definitions new to each chapter, then a few pages of questions related to the chapter.
The work of translating each passage is left solely to the reader, and the questions are intended to help the reader learn. Most of them, with a little thought, provide answers and tips to the rest of the questions.
Despite not having a list of answers to the chapter work, I definitely think it's a better resource than most language learning software.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews