Course description
For the beginning and intermediate classes, we use "Ultimate Portuguese Basic-Intermediate" by Living Language. There is also an optional eight cassette package that accompanies the book. For the advanced classes, we provide handouts at no charge.
Beginning A (chapters 1-6)
Topics - Greetings and introductions, asking for information, clock time, dining out, weather, months, and seasons, and at the movie theater.
Grammar and usage - Pronunciation, the verbs "to be", negation, gender and number of nouns and adjectives, subject pronouns, articles, question words, time, numbers, present tense of regular verbs, etc.
Beginning B (chapters 7-12)
Topics - The body and health, family members, groceries, at the train station, eating in a restaurant, and making a collect call.
Grammar and usage - Irregular verbs, possessive pronouns and adjectives, near future, common prepositions, contractions, adverbs, other questions words, etc.
Beginning C (chapters 13-19)
Topics - Renting an apartment, at the pharmacy, daily activities, at the bus station, at the airport, renting a car, and at the office.
Grammar and usage - Object pronouns, reflexive verbs, reflexive object pronouns, reciprocal object pronouns, comparatives, polite commands, relative pronouns, superlative, begin preterite, etc.
Intermediate A (chapters 20-26)
Topics - At the park, at the doctor's office, at the dentist's, at the beauty parlor, at the theater box office, at an antiques store, and looking for a job.
Grammar and usage - Additional irregular verbs, present conditional, additional preterite, "let's" command, ordinal numbers, imperfect tense, past progressive, professions, etc.
Intermediate B (chapters 27-33)
Topics- At the post office, at the travel agency, at the bank, at the currency exchange office, at the police station, watching television, and at the movies.
Grammar and usage - The present and past perfect tenses, expressions, sending letters, faxes, and telegrams, future tense, future perfect tense, present conditional, conditional perfect, passive, subjunctive, etc.
Intermediate C (chapters 34-40)
Topics - Sports, at the hotel, the media, holidays and festivals, politics and rights, household errands, and visiting Brazil.
Grammar and usage - Additional subjunctive tense, augmentatives, imperfect subjunctive, present perfect subjunctive, past perfect subjunctive, slang and colloquial expressions, etc.
Advanced Classes
Topics - Discussion of articles, issues, literature, etc.
Grammar and usage - As appropriate related to conversation topics.
