Although this is not a book for beginners, if you already speak a little Portuguese and know the sounds of the language, this is a great resource for expanding your knowledge of colloquial Portuguese. I adopted a sibling group from Brazil a couple of years ago, so I have an in-house source for the language of the street. But this is a well-designed, well-written textbook that provides a vocabulary list and a reading section based on the vocabulary covered up to that point (something that is now quite rare in language textbooks in my experience as a college Spanish prof).



If you still need help with the sounds of Portuguese, then you will want to purchase the audio CD from Amazon (ISBN: 0415430992).



I speak rather fluent Portuguese, but I still need help with colloquial speech. I found this book to be exactly what I needed.