Colloquial Swedish provides a step-by-step course in Swedish as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Swedish in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
Key features
• progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills • structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar • an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises • realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios • useful vocabulary lists throughout the text • additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key, a grammar summary and bilingual glossaries
Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Swedish will be an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Swedish. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.
It starts as a really good language book, but... I started to feel irritated along the course.
First and foremost, there are errors here and there... Poor proofread...
The two male voice actors (Kalle/Robert or the one who read Unit 8 text) are annoying: one speaks with an extremely sleepy voice (not sure whether he stayed focused), the other speaks as quickly as he can, like he doesn't want you to follow! His voice is not as clear either, as in he has something in his mouth while talking... I felt the impulse to skip the whole text whenever the two speak.
The contents, especially the dialogues, are getting boring from Unit 6/7 as well. The characters (for dialogues' sake) are superficial and shallow as well.
I don't know if I should consider this book "read" until I am actually fluent in Swedish. I have worked through chapters 1-4 like 3 times, and I've worked through 5-8 once or one and a half times, and I've skimmed the rest.