Do you know what's the biggest obstacle preventing many from learning Portuguese to fluency? It's a lack of vocabulary!
Reading in Portuguese is perhaps the most effective way to build up your vocabulary. With our book Portuguese Short Stories for Beginners and Intermediate Learners , you can practice reading the language while working on your Portuguese vocabulary and grammar skills.
The stories contained within this book were written with Portuguese language learners in mind, so you don't have to worry about the level of the reading being too difficult as you encounter new vocabulary and grammar to learn Portuguese.
Our Portuguese short stories use only the real language as spoken and written by native speakers every day so that you can learn Portuguese the natural way. They have been written in Brazilian Portuguese by a native speaker from Brazil.
Language Guru has amassed quite a few titles in its Short Stories for Beginners and Intermediate Learners series. Each of these books has similar short story themes, like food, work, or exercise. The details only change slightly. For instance, the food sections often reflect the culture of the language’s native speakers. These books are meant to be used in the extensive method of learning language as an adult. That means that you should try to pick up the meaning through context and not slavishly look up every word that you don't know. In a slight bow to intensive learning, the authors do give a vocabulary list in both languages for each story. They recommend, as do I, that you actually look at the vocabulary list first so you can at least grasp a few essential keywords and phrases to help your understanding of the text. Each story has a similar format: the short story in Portuguese, the Portuguese-English vocabulary list, a short quiz in Portuguese about the story, and finally the English translation of the story. I think these books can be helpful to a late beginning or intermediate foreign language learner, whether your course of study is intensive or extensive. The short stories are relatively short and use fairly simple vocabulary and structure. I wouldn't recommend this book for the rank beginner, as you would get lost very quickly with no basis in the language.
I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.
It was another great read in Portuguese. The stories were fairly easy to understand. Even though I didn’t have to worry much about the quizzes at the end, I still tried my best. I even reread certain parts to make sure I was correct.
So yeah, I’d say check it out. It’s pretty good. 👍
The chapters are filled with stories that are engaging but also ones that get progressively harder as you get further on. I feel like these short stories are the perfect way to refine my language skills. Hats off to the creators and I hope they do more advanced ones in Portuguese.