Product Description

This stand-alone, all-audio course can be used by those who have little or no knowledge of the language, by those who want to learn or brush up basic conversation skills, and by more advanced learners who require extra audio material to complement their current courses.

The ten units or 'conversations' cover the situations you are most likely to find yourself in while on holiday or on business abroad. They are divided into two parts, with a dialogue in each part. The dialogue in Part 2 reuses the vocabulary and phrases from Part 1 in a slightly different context. Both parts start with an introduction to the words and phrases you'll need, followed by the dialogue. Finally it's 'Over to you': you take part in the same dialogues following the English prompts, playing all the roles in turn. So you get lots of opportunity to practise! Frequent track markers divide the CDs up into short, easy-to-use clips.

Vocabulary and phrases in the first two CDs are kept to the basics and are introduced gradually with lots of opportunity to repeat and practise, to improve your confidence in both speaking and understanding. The third CD concentrates on helping you improve your understanding, so that you will be able to hold two-way conversations with people who speak very fast or use words and phrases you do not know.

The course comes on three 75-minute CDs and has an accompanying 48-page booklet which gives the dialogues and the translations of the dialogues, for those who like to see the written word or want additional practice. The booklet also provides a basic glossary of the words and phrases used.

This is the perfect complement to 'Bulgarian' in the 'Teach Yourself' series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79778 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-29
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: Bulgarian, English
• Binding: Audio CD

Review
"I am a big fan of this series. Commercial packaging, simple concept and a competitive price make these well worth trying....One to watch." (The Bookseller )

About the Author

Dr. Mira Kovatcheva, Associate Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Sofia. Currently lectures on History of English, Languages in Contact, Formation of Slang. Dr Kovatcheva has been teaching Bulgarian as a foreign language since 1989 when on a three-year secondment to Leeds University. Jointly authored (with Professor Michael Holman) Teach Yourself Bulgarian (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993, revised second edition 2003). Since 1994 has conducted the Bulgarian oral examinations for the Test and Examination Services of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Language Group. Regularly teaches Bulgarian as a foreign language to visiting academics under the Fullbright Exchange Program. Recently authored a self-study sourcebook for advanced learners of Bulgarian: Bulgarian: Beyond the First Steps (Prosveta, Sofia 2005).
Michael Holman, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Leeds. Taught Bulgarian and Russian at Leeds 1966-1999. Has translated from Bulgarian and written on a variety of Bulgarian-related topics. While at Leeds and since taking early retirement has sought to promote Anglo-Bulgarian cultural interchange. For this he was awarded the ‘Order of Stara Planina’ (First Class) by the Bulgarian Government and an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Sofia. Jointly authored (with Dr Mira Kovatcheva) Teach Yourself Bulgarian (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993, revised second edition 2003).

Customer Reviews

A worthwhile addition to the existingTeach Yourself Bulgarian products .
This is generally a worthwhile addition to the 'Teach Yourself Bulgarian' products already available from these authors. For one who has already worked through their rather more formal 'Teach Yourself Bulgarian' course, these CDs provide further useful listening material with new voices, which is an important factor in hearing and understanding the spoken word. For those with this initial experience, the first of the 3 CDs may seem rather redundant - but useful for beginners none-the-less.
The only criticism I would have is with the printed booklet. It elects to print the text in English (fine), and in Bulgarian transliterated into Latin text (also fine). But for those of us who have struggled to learn Cyrillic, this is rather tedious, as seeing now familiar words in a strange garb is just as unsettling as seeing our English place names in Cyrillic! For beginners, the first major hurdle in learning this language is the Cyrillic alphabet because it is seen everywhere you go. Printing the text in Latin is, of course, useful for pronunciation, but if the publishers could have found just a little more space to print the text in Cyrillic too, it would have served both beginners and intermediates even better.

Good and easy to use
I bought this and also the Teach Yourself book and CD at the same time, as I thought the Bulgarian Conversation CDs would be good to use in my car.

I find learning other languages tough, but Bulgarian Conversation is relatively pain-free. The Teach Yourself book I found much harder to get to grips with, but once onto the second CD of Bulgarian Conversation, I went back to the Teach Yourself book and found it very much easier.

Completely agree with the previous reviewer about the use of just Roman script in the accompanying booklet. I could already read Cyrillic and find it almost impossible to make sense of Bulgarian reproduced in Roman letters, which looks extremely odd.

One other thing - the 'Making sense of it all' and 'Getting to grips with the grammar' sections on the CDs are very helpful, but it's easy to forget what's said in them as you move through the course. It would be useful to have these sections summarised in the booklet. There is a small grammar section already, but it doesn't really go far enough in my view.

could take you far
I found this package better than some of the other ones I had tried with less success. Although the pace was quite fast for a beginner it was at least clearly aimed at adults and I did not find it patronising unlike some of those aimed at more junior students.
The secret is with this course is to back track frequently to make the most of the linguistic tips given throughout the lessons. My sole regret is that I did not find this earlier as it would undoubtedly have saved me time and effort in addition to improving my understanding and pronunciation.
I whole heartedly recommend it to anyone intending to spend time in Bulgaria, especially outside of the main resort areas.