Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
From Cantonese to Thai, Gaelic to Modern Persian, learning the languages of the world is attainable for any beginning student. Learners can use the Teach Yourself Complete Language Courses at their own pace or as a supplement to formal courses.
All Teach Yourself Complete Language Courses include:
Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues
Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises
Step-by-step guides to pronunciation
Practical vocabulary
Regular and irregular verb tables
A bilingual glossary
A clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
Self-assessment quizzes to test progress
Fully updated audio recordings on CD for easy access and review
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
More than Pleasantly Surprised
Customer Rating:
I have wanted to learn Norwegian for some time, but as an American student living on the East Coast, my resources have been someone limited. On a whim, I picked up a copy of this book from my college bookstore, hoping to cruise through it over time and perhaps pick up at least some introductory knowledge of the language. I got a lot more than I thought I would. The chapters are organized and helpful, the vocabulary lists build on each other, and the subject matter is interesting. I use it everyday.
To give you an idea of what this book has done for me, let me say that I have taken five years of German at both the high school and university level. Though I can read and write German better, my Norwegian speaking skills are inexplicably stronger. For having only worked on learning the language a few months, I can easily hold various conversations. The book is excellent for building conversational skills as well as skills in both reading and writing.
If you're looking to get started in Norwegian, look no further than this book. It's simply awesome.
Amazing book!
Customer Rating:
This is truly an amazing book! This is the 1st "teach yourself" book that I have ever bought, and I feel that it is one of the best purchases I have done in recent time. I have not even started chapter 1, but I already know that this is a great book? Why? Because I tried to study Norwegian with Laura Ziukaite-Hansen's book (Beginner's Norwegian with 2 audio cds) and well, it didn't work.
When I started with the latter, I was left with a lot of doubts concerning even BASIC stuff such as vowels and consonants. Things were not explained in a clear way, and I felt that I needed a lot of reinforcement in a lot of areas. This book is certainly not recommended. On top of it all, my book was missing one cd! That REALLY (emphasize on really) discouraged me a lot, to the point that I did not study Norwegian for nearly a year! I know that I can return the item, but since I live over-seas it is cheaper for me to order a new book than to send the old one back.
Teach Yourself' book is A LOT better. There are a lot of audio parts, so you read, then hear what you just read (great reinforcement) and then make some exercises. That's great!
The other book, on the other hand, only had dialogues and repetition situations. This one, however; had also the theory in audio format, so it really helps a lot and you really feel that you're learning and progressing a lot!
Totally recommended, buy this!
Great Book...
Customer Rating:
I'm about half way through this book (it's taken about a month, but I'm putting lots and lots of time into it) and so far I've been very impressed with the clarity and organization throughout. I have a number of Teach Yourself language books... and some of them are horribly disorganized and illogically sequenced--especially those published from around 10 to 15 years ago. It seems that the TY people have finally come to their senses with the newer offerings (especially the "Beginner's Series" French and Italian--those are wonderful).
This book is very well presented. The vocabulary is introduced mostly at the word level with nice lists and definitions side by side (not predominately at the phrase level, which is a weakness for many TY language books, IMO). You actually learn to use words and put them together into sentences, rather than learning a bunch of semi-useless static "canned" phrases.
The voice actors present dialog very well/clearly in an ongoing story format--it's quite entertaining at times (reminds me of a Spanish telenovela). The grammar is introduced in very digestible chunks (in fact, personally I could take that part way faster). On the vocabulary side, I find it to be quite intense, almost overwhelming at times. There are around 1500 words introduced and several hundred phrases. For me personally, the vocabulary comes too quickly. I find myself getting bogged down with memorizing new words after I've long since done the grammar from the section. But that is just personal learning strengths/weaknesses. I pick up grammar very fast... and memorize vocabulary quite slowly. It may be different for you. I know many people shudder at the mention of grammar--trust me, in this book it's presented very understandably.
Finally, as is the problem with nearly EVERY language book I've seen, there are just not nearly enough exercises/practice problems. I won't fault this book for it, since it's a common condition. About ten times more practice would be nice. I find myself trying to come up with my own exercises to help me remember all of this vocabulary. I also use other books (Janus' Verbs & Essentials of Grammar, Colloquial Norwegian, Hippocrene's Beginner's Norwegian) for extra practice. Of course, if your memory is sharp, you might not need so much practice/study.
All in all, this is my favorite of the Norwegian books I have. I'm already able to understand some of what I hear on Norwegian (internet) radio. There is quite a lot of vocabulary similarity with English, which is nice. And Norwegian grammar is very refreshing compared to other languages--it's relatively simple. I wouldn't say Norwegian is "easy" for an English speaker, but it's not nearly as hard as is a language such as Gaelic or Finnish. Not even close.
A helpful hint: The Norwegian Conversation CDs by Teach Yourself are a great supplement to this course. They roughly follow this book's sequence and are great for additional practice with vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Good set
Customer Rating:
My only complaint is the CD was a little hard to use because it went through everything at a breakneck pace. You can't use it much without the book. Each chapter has only a few minutes of audio and I was always rewinding. That's not to say it wasn't a very useful addition to the book, especially for something as hard to learn to pronounce as Norwegian. It's just not something you can use in the car.
Overall though, the course is very well done and is a great deal for the price.
Very Good
Customer Rating:
I'm only on chapter 7 (of 16) but so far it's been great. The pronuniation guide section is a little off, but you learn very quickly to pronounce Norwegian by listening to the recording. It's definently not for someone who only wants to learn "survival" Norwegian, or just enough to get by if you were to go to Norway. It's for serious students, something that many language textbooks lack. All in all, very impressed.
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