Get Started in Swedish Absolute Beginner Course: The essential introduction to reading, writing, speaking and understanding a new language (Teach Yourself)

Let me start by saying I am a native English speaker and have studied German and Spanish through the intermediate level, so I consider myself a seasoned language learner.I used this book and CD as a supplement to an online course I am taking. This isn't a bad book for me in this context. I do think it could be a little tough for someone without some background in a Germanic language or if it were used as the only text. The Discovery Method is a good idea, but they do take it a bit far at times. The glossary is really inadequate, and I find myself using a dictionary more often than not to find words. (I use the Hippocrene Practical Dictionary, which is a pretty solid beginner's reference.) Some exercises ask for answers using constructions that haven't been covered yet, and there are mistakes in the book that I caught which could have been easily avoided with a solid proofread. I hope that future editions clean up some of the sloppy design of the book Overall, not bad for a seasoned learner and the CD is useful for pronunciation, but I am glad I am not a newbie learning Swedish solely from this text.

The book is much smaller than I believed it would be. It's not a bad book, and there's a cd to listen to (not that I want it... a website code would have been better) but just be aware, it's not a text book.

This was more to enhance the info I already knew and I find this to be an incredibly helpful tool alongside watching videos on youtube

This was for my husband, I want him to learn Swedish, my own language and he Loved getting this for Christmas!! Thank You!! :)

Excellent for starters!! Very easy to understand and follow. Glad I bought it

I used the free audiobook on the Teach Yourself app and it was extremely helpful. I am a linguist and I have completed the Swedish tree on Duolingo all the way to level 5, and this was a much needed reference for real spoken Swedish by natives. Very pleased and recommend the book, even though it will be hard for an absolutely beginner in my personal opinion

Streaming pile of useless! Normally I love the teach yourself series but after a few frustrating months with this book and I am in Sweden at the moment, speaking the language in Linköping as often as possible. This book was a brick wall, it is this discovery method that seems to be in fashion even though there is no proof that this method works any better than others and others claim that it is not a method to be used for beginners, I feel this to be true, the book asks you questions of a dialogue with very little introductory vocab and then wishes you to discover the meaning through reading the book/ glossary / context etc this is very difficult to do without a starting vocab and basic notion of the grammatical rules of Swedish or other Scandinavian languages, try finding the infinitive form of a verb that has only been shown to you in a present tense without any explanation of verb form changes and why for example. I used pimsleur instead and duolingo and websites to get the basics and memrise for vocab, wish this book was good but it is not , at least to me I do like the japanese and the french books in the series but I know more of those languages so was easier to follow even if difficulty level was higher

The book, contrary to its claims, is not for absolute beginners. There is very little introduction to the language before you’re asked to listen to and interpret fairly complex dialogues.

Very good and easy to understand.

This book is definitely not a book for beginners. No introduction to the language or basics of it. It jumps straight away to long texts and missing a lot of explanations and translations

I am no linguist, and I found this very difficult to use, the spoken Swedish on the CD is spoken very quickly and not repeated. It didn't feel like a beginners course at all!

The disc came totally damaged. I just received this moments ago. Was so excited and this is what the back of the cd looks like. The book seems ok. Not having the cod though screws it up for me tho.