Três Histórias Diferentes para Aprender Português

Três Histórias Diferentes para Aprender Português

As a Portuguese teacher I have always struggled to find decent resources to use in my lessons, since most Portuguese resources use formal language and don’t assist in essential vocabulary development. Essential vocabulary are those 2000 basic words that you need to know to communicate basic things. That’s what a language student first needs. For this reason, I have written some stories that now I have self-published and are available for sale by Amazon.

My book is called Três Histórias Diferentes para Aprender Português (Three Different Stories for Learning Portuguese). These three stories are ‘different’ for the following reasons:

1st reason: they enable students of all levels to enjoy the stories, so the first story can be mainly used by Beginners (A1 level) and the others by Intermediate/Advanced level (B1 to C2);
2nd reason: they use different tenses (for instance, the first chapter is completely on Present Tense);
3rd reason: they show sentence construction and verb conjugation in first and third person;
Finally: they help the student to avoid losing interest in the book. Long books in a foreign language may be hard to complete. Thus, these three stories are short and very distinct, with a different type of narrative, scenario and literary genre.

All vocabulary in this book can be useful; every single word is safe to learn. I hate when I read Italian novels and get all excited with new words, make associations and memorize them and when I have the chance to use those words with natives of the language, they say they have never heard of them. If you try to read Portuguese/Brazilian novels or any other type of literature, even for kids, you will also see lots of words that are not common. Sometimes this happens only because writers think they need to use uncommon words to sound ‘clever’. Unfortunately that’s not good for those who want to learn a language.

So, what other fiction books are available for learning Portuguese? In the UK, only a few, and most of them are not good for the same reason as pointed above. And although some of these books were also written as ‘language learning resources’, writers have committed the same mistake: writing in a difficult and useless language. That’s the case of lots of new language learning collections called ‘Bilingual Books’.

Bilingual books, in my opinion, are terrible. What’s the fun in reading something with the translation below the sentences? You are the one who needs to translate, so you can learn how the structure works! And it’s searching in a dictionary that you memorize new words, not through a ‘ready-made’ translation. It’s necessary to pass through this ‘translational’ stage to learn by reading.

Inside the BookLanguage learning must be fun and practical and that is the point of Três Histórias para Aprender Português. The first story is called A Árvore Mágica. It’s the story of a boy who finds a magic tree. It’s a great story for beginners since it only uses basic tenses and there is a lot of repetition and conjugation. The second is O Mistério do Gato, a very fun detective story. The last story is my favourite since it’s related to my personal experience with language learning. It’s called Os Cinco Coelhos do Monge Pitânis and it tells the story of a monk who decides to learn five different languages. For this, he takes five rabbits to live with him on the mountains and he trains himself using several learning techniques.

The illustrations were made by a Brazilian friend of mine who lives in London. He is also a great painter and has been exhibiting over there (www.natanheber.com).

If you are serious about learning Portuguese, I truly recommend my book. Not only because I want to sell my product, but because I see it as an excellent learning resource, and as a language student myself, I would love to find something like this for the languages that I’m learning. Unfortunately I’ve never found anything similar (if you know other similar books, please leave a comment).

Três Histórias para Aprender Português is available on Amazon, on Paperback and also on an electronic edition (for Kindle). Here are the links to buy it:

International / USA: http://www.amazon.com/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs/dp/1514718804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439759706&sr=8-1&keywords=tres+historias+diferentes
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs-ebook/dp/B013RAOZ96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439758829&sr=8-1&keywords=tres+historias+para+aprender+portugues
Brazil: http://www.amazon.com.br/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs-ebook/dp/B013RAOZ96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439716240&sr=8-1&keywords=historias+diferentes+para+aprender (Kindle Edition only)
France: http://www.amazon.fr/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs-ebook/dp/B013RAOZ96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439759745&sr=8-1&keywords=historias+diferentes+para+aprender
Italy: http://www.amazon.it/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs-ebook/dp/B013RAOZ96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439760034&sr=8-1&keywords=tres+historias+diferentes
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs-ebook/dp/B013RAOZ96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439759838&sr=8-1&keywords=tres+historias+diferentes
Spain: http://www.amazon.es/Tr%C3%AAs-Hist%C3%B3rias-Diferentes-Aprender-Portugu%C3%AAs-ebook/dp/B013RAOZ96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439759889&sr=8-1&keywords=tres+historias+diferentes

The book is available in all Amazon websites, so if your country is not listed here please go to your country’s Amazon website and search for the book. If your country doesn’t have an Amazon provider, you may still be able to buy it through Amazon.com (see the first link on the list above).

I hope you like the book!!! Boa leitura! 🙂

6 Comments on “Três Histórias Diferentes para Aprender Português

  1. Finalmente, eu tenho um livro que esta perfeito para me ajudar com meu estudar! por favor escreve mais livros !!! obrigada

    • Olá Jan, que bom que gostou! Um novo livro vai ser publicado no fim de maio (ou começo de junho) 2016. Continue visitando o Blog para mais informações. 🙂

      PS: pequenas correções no seu comentário: “Finalmente, eu tenho um livro que É perfeito para me ajudar com MEUS ESTUDOS.” Mas muito bem, seu português é ótimo! Parabéns!

  2. Hello
    I just randomly found your site and the books,and bought them at amazon.es,but this book of three stories cant be shipped to Portugal,so that I chouldnt acquire it.

    • Hi, great to know you bought the books! Thank you so much, I hope they will help you with your Portuguese. About the 3 Histórias, it’s strange they are not delivering to Portugal. Thanks for letting me know about this issue. I just updated the price which might fix the problem, so if you try again in 24hrs it should work, otherwise, contact me by email and I can dispatch from the UK to your address. Obrigado!

      • Maybe I was too late, but it still doesn’t delivery to portugal unlike the other two.
        Still, I appreciate your response. Now Shipping from UK takes too long, I am little worried considering the summer vacation. I’ll contact you by e-mail later, perhaps the book could be useful then. Thank you

        Fixing the problem allows english adaptable speakers in Portugal get access to your first book more easily.
        I am interested in your Obra cuz I agree with you: Portuguese books are too formal to learn. As result we undertake too much unnecessary curves when trying to understand and to enjoying it.

        Até à próxima !

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