|
Review by: Cl�mence Jou�t-Pastr�, Portuguese Lecturer, Stanford
University
Author: Dr. Ros�ngela Silva
Distributor: The University of Arizona Press. http://clp.arizona.edu/cls
System requirements: Windows 95 or higher, sound cart, and
9 MB free disk space. Microphone recommended.
Price: US$69.95
Description and intended use of software
Beginning Brazilian Portuguese is a second language computer
program developed as part of the University of Arizona Critical
Language Series, which includes five other titles: Beginning Cantonese,
Kazakh, Turkish, Korean, and Chinese. Customized for adults and
college-age students at the beginning level, this software can be
used either as a tool for self-study or as a classroom component
of an integrated course of Brazilian Portuguese.
The program consists of two CD-ROMs containing ten lessons each.
The dialogue components are presented as audio, video, and written
script and are accompanied by grammatical and cultural notes. Additionally,
each lesson consists of five different exercise activities. These
activities are multiple choice tasks, vocabulary completion,
audio flashcards, pronunciation practice, and listening dictation.
Many opportunities also exist for the learner to record his or her
own voice and compare it with versions pre-recorded by native speakers.
This double CD-ROM also includes a brief summary about the Portuguese
language. It teaches the origins of Portuguese, where it is spoken,
and explores English cognates. Five original songs are composed
to relate to the topics of the units and the final lesson teaches
about Brazilian gestures.
Ease of use
The CD-ROM set is easy to use. There are no installation requirements
to launch the program. The user needs merely to insert one of the
CD-ROMs in the CD driver and it starts automatically. The graphics
are clear, and the audio and video clips respond promptly to the
click of the mouse. The program is relatively intuitive and easy
to navigate with help available on every screen. Unfortunately,
the icon "Exit" is available only at the initial screen.
To quit the program from any other screen, the user has three cumbersome
options: press the keys "ALT" plus "F4", go
to the "File menu" and then click on "Exit",
or come back to the initial screen to click on the "Exit"
icon.
Pedagogical content
Beginning Brazilian Portuguese is flexible and offers a
vast array of options in order to serve the needs of students with
different learning styles. Users may approach lessons in a variety
of ways. For example, after watching the video featured at the beginning
of a lesson and getting as much as possible from the oral and visual
sources, users can choose to watch the video again without sound
in order to better observe and assimilate paralinguistic features
such as gestures and facial expressions. They can also start a lesson
with video, but without sound. In this case, users try to interpret
visual cues and "guess" the dialogue’s content, uttering
words and phrases based on the knowledge that they would have acquired
in the previous lessons. Another option is to start the lesson by
listening to the dialogue while following its written form. At the
sentence level, students can follow links to grammatical and cultural
footnotes, all explained in English. In addition, learners have
the option of either listening to the entire dialogue with no pauses,
or word-by-word with pauses, or reading word-by-word with each word
spoken in English.
The program, based on a continuing story of an American undergraduate
exchange student who goes to Brazil to study for a year, explores
many language registers used in appropriate social contexts. The
American character, whose Portuguese accent is perfect due to the
fact that her father is Brazilian, interacts with her host family
using informal language. The spoken register changes when, for example,
she has to open a bank account, to sign up for courses at the university,
or to interact with young Brazilians in a local caf�. The language
is, without a doubt, scripted. Nevertheless, the native speakers
in the videos use the speed and intonation of normal conversation
speech making reductions typical of Brazilian Portuguese.
For users who need to interact with native speakers of Brazilian
Portuguese, this double CD-ROM provides good practice in understanding
the kind of Portuguese they are likely to hear and use.
The exercises featured in Beginning Brazilian Portuguese
are another highlight of the program. There is a good variety of
them including: multiple choice tasks, vocabulary completion,
audio flashcards, pronunciation practice, and listening dictation,
which enable students to test and improve their knowledge of each
lesson without getting bored. The program provides immediate feedback
and keeps a tally of the user’s correct answers.
Another positive feature of the program is its practicality. Students
do not need a textbook or a workbook. Yet, if they wish to have
hardcopies of the materials available on the CDs, they can print
them out. In addition, the CD-ROMs include all dictionary and grammatical
information necessary for the course. The program avoids less commonly
used vocabulary and grammatical points and emphasizes meaning and
communication over linguistic forms.
In spite of the overall exceptionally good quality of this software,
there are some minor flaws that need to be corrected in future editions.
There are, for example, a variety of problems with diacritical marks.
To cite just a few, sometimes circumflexes become dieresis and tildes
are distorted. Videos present occasional problems. In lesson five,
for instance, one character is supposedly showing his house to another
character; however, the viewer is only able to see the characters’
faces while they talk about different rooms that do not appear in
the video. It is very likely that users would get lost and annoyed
with the lack of visual cues.
Conclusion
In a market with a shortage of computer-based materials for Portuguese
learning, Beginning Brazilian Portuguese is a wonderful addition
to available resources. Its content is rich, organized and up-to-date.
It accommodates different learning styles, and allows students to
explore Brazilian culture, vocabulary, and grammar in context. In
spite of the shortcomings discussed above, I would highly recommend
this program for any adult interested in learning the Brazilian
Portuguese.
Cl�mence Jou�t-Pastr�
Stanford University
December 2000
|
