Refining Portuguese

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fresh_air
Yellow Belt
Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:12 pm
Location: EUA
Languages: English*, Portuguese

Learning: Russian
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Re: Refining Portuguese

Postby fresh_air » Thu May 28, 2020 3:04 am

An update: Turkish never happened.

I've been focusing on Portuguese and am an a B2 distance course right now to realllly push my B2 level from a mid B2 to a strong B2. I'm reading a book every 10 days or so, and watching a couple of movies a week. I'm feeling an urge to pursue my Master's degree at the USP or UNICAMP, but I would need to be a strong C1 and know a ton about Brazilian history and politics to even be able to pass the entrance exam. I kind of want to learn Russian - I'm up to lesson 10 on pimsleur - but I don't know how serious I am about this.. It seems like it might be a waste, but I've been cursed with wanderlust from an early age. My eye continues wandering towards these other languages, but I want to remain serious about my Portuguese studies.
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fresh_air
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Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:12 pm
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Re: Refining Portuguese

Postby fresh_air » Sat May 30, 2020 4:48 pm

I'm starting to listen to Bom Dia Brasil from Globo every morning - it's an hour long, available everyday, and you can access it from globoplay.globo.com. For the intermediate learner this is probably the best thing you can do to improve comprehension, and from here on out I'm going to incorporate it into my routine. I no longer have the luxury of being immersed in Portuguese :|

I had an interesting conversation with my tutor over skype yesterday: for the imperative, if there's two verbs together, put a nem in-between them (or nor in English). I recognized it while reading, but when I spoke I would put a ´e não ´ in the middle. For example

Não filme nem fotografe


I used to say Não filme e não fotografe, which is incorrect.
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fresh_air
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Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:12 pm
Location: EUA
Languages: English*, Portuguese

Learning: Russian
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Re: Refining Portuguese

Postby fresh_air » Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:13 am

I went hard today calling my Brazilian friends over Skype - my new webcam just came in and I've been trying to get my money's worth. It's been months since I've spent time just talking to friends, and I can tell my conversational ability has gotten rusty. I talked to one acquaintance who goes to UFMG in Belo Horizonte, and I had some questions for her because I was interested in the Linguistics program she attends. I have read some of Mario Perini's work (a professor of Linguistics at UFMG), which piqued my initial interest. Apparently their Linguistics department is very good and produces a variety of interesting material regarding bilingualism, language acquisition, and the study of Libras, or Brazilian Sign Language. Aside from that, I'd have to live in Belo Horizonte, and I can attest that this city is not the most livable city I've been to - so I'm not sure about the feasibility of relocating there...
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fresh_air
Yellow Belt
Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:12 pm
Location: EUA
Languages: English*, Portuguese

Learning: Russian
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Re: Refining Portuguese

Postby fresh_air » Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:21 am

A new development has happened in my language learning studies. I was accepted to a one-year Russian prep. program in Odesa Ukraine! I leave at the end of August and I'll be there until June. I know there's some polemic about travelling, but I'm going to self-isolate for two weeks, and my quarantine in the States has been very strict! I have spent zero time with anyone who is not my direct relative. Anyways, I barely know anything in Russian.. This will be interesting to observe what level I can obtain with six hours a day study seven days a week in an immersed environment. I am starting an absolute beginner, I only know numbers, a couple of basic phrases and I have Cyrillic down because I spent a few months learning Macedonian in highschool and I really nailed down the alphabet. I predict I can get to a mid-B2 level after a year, and I will be sure to create a new log and update everyone on another semi-regular basis. I'm not super talented (aka hardworking) like some members on here, I'm sure one of our other more advanced learners could clear C1 in a year. Anyways, I may start a podcast or a youtube channel of some sorts during my experiment.

Regarding Portuguese, I have made great strides with the Instiuto Camões. They give about 6 hours of coursework a week, and I study an additional 6-7 hours, making my total average to around 2 hours a day, a rate that I'm happy with. I have 2 weeks left on my B2 program and I feel very solidly B2. My tutor has remarked on my rapid progress, and my Portuguese is much more fluid and I commit fewer grammatical mistakes. Areas I need to work on: being more cautious with my grammatical gender, vocabulary, and using 'para' less because I say para more than I need to - I imagine other Anglophones find themselves stuck doing this too. I may enroll in the C1 course in a few months, I'll see how I feel once I get my toes wet in Russian.
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fresh_air
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Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:12 pm
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Re: Refining Portuguese

Postby fresh_air » Fri Sep 25, 2020 3:58 am

My Portuguese has been on the back burner since coming to Ukraine - I have been doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day of maintenance, nothing formal, just messaging friends, listening to music, and reading the news.

I can give an overview of my Russian progress:

My course runs five hours a day for five days a week, with around an hour and a half of homework a day. The first two weeks have been primarily focused on learning Cyrillic cursive and writing. I'm a borderline millennial/gen z and my handwriting in the Latin alphabet is nothing less than atrocious - working on cyrillic has improved my regular handwriting and I have no problem 'reading' typical handwriting by Russian speakers - understanding the content is still beyond my grasp :D.

We're learning prepositions and nouns, names of basic objects in everyday life - eta lampa, eta mama, mama tyt, papa doma, all really basic stuff. We're also learning basic conjugations, present tense - 1st person 2nd person 3rd personal plural etc. Our conversation classes will run one day a week starting next week, with the rest of the week being delegated to grammar. By the end of the course in June, our instructor estimates we will have a strong B1/weak B2 depending on our motivation and consistency in our classes. I'm using really archaic material, a lot of exercise books and textbooks from the 90's, it can get really dry but being able to go out on the street and recoginze words in text and conversation has encouraged me to continue. I can't really communicate, just very basic pleasentries and directions, but I'm happy with my progress. Something I really never noticied with Portuguese, perhaps because I was having a lot more fun interacting with Brazilians as I already had an A2 level when I arrived, is that learning from the ground up in a new country is stressful and exhausting. I wake away from my 5 hours of Russian physically and mentally drained, I literally need to take a 20 minute nap before I can get on with my day. I can speak more in detail of my materials and methods in a different post, or piggybacking off some of my other posts were I mentioned I was leaving to Ukraine.
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User avatar
fresh_air
Yellow Belt
Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:12 pm
Location: EUA
Languages: English*, Portuguese

Learning: Russian
x 223

Re: Refining Portuguese

Postby fresh_air » Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:20 pm

I left Ukraine after my A1 course was completed. I was intending on staying but the switch to online Zoom meetings wasn’t doing it for me. Group sessions with 10+ people over Zoom are difficult for me to maintain attention, and I figured I would be better off returning to the US and study a few hours a day on my own time.

Things I’ve learned:

Handwriting Russian Cyrillic has made my penmanship so much better. I can “read” Russian cursive (or recognize the phonemes at least), and I feel so satisfied to write line after line and look on my improvement.

I can understand basic directions and commands, and respond at a simple level, I can talk about my family and my work history. I can also recognize the 6 cases, albeit I still need to work on them a ton. My pronunciation has improved leaps and bounds, and I have started to develop an intuition on which syllable of a word I read is stressed. Best of all, I learned to prepare some tasty Ukrainian dishes. This alone made the trip worth it!

All in all, I’ve reached a strong A1 level. I’m a little disappointed I couldn’t stay and finish the course, but I’ve equipped myself with a tool set that will make my self-study much more efficient. The course material the school provided honestly sucks, I gave all of my books away as I couldn’t really use them. They’re basically worksheets with vague instructions all in Russian. There’s way better material available.

To improve my level, I’m listening to music every day, I’m writing in Russian with friends and acquaintances I’ve met, I’m working on doing one lesson of Pimsleur a day, around 20 minutes of Assimil and 300 reps on Glossika. Once my school and workload cool down, I’m going to start working with tutors. In total, I figure I’m practicing for around 1.5 to 2 hours a day. By the end of the year I hope to be a very strong A2 and working into the B1 category.

With Portuguese, everything is normal. I haven’t made any progress, but I’ve managed to keep myself from forgetting what I know. I send audios and make calls about once a week and I try to practice for at least 20 minutes a day. I feel that my oral capabilities are slipping, but that’s expected.
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