Better to do passive immersion before studying? First time learner

[Cainntear]

Also, in another thread, the subject of "passive bilinguals" came up. My experience is that many so-called passive bilinguals are actually quite poor at understanding the passive language, and only act like they do. I've seen very similar facial expressions on so-called passive bilinguals with Gaelic as I've seen on non-native English speakers who've moved to the UK to improve their English -- a sort of "I kind of don't understand you but am not willing to admit it" face.

The problem with passive understanding is that it really doesn't exist -- language is *always* active: part of understanding is predicting the most likely continuation of a sentence, and your prediction being proven right or wrong adds to the meaning. If you can't produce sentences, your ability to predict is drastically limited.

If people who are spoken to be beloved family members in a language don't get decent comprehension of that language, why would anyone expect decent understanding from watching a soap opera?

[JLS]

Watching videos (ie. passive) is perhaps good to get a broad feel of the language and to accustom the ear to the sound of the language. However, it's still better to add an element of intense and studied observation.

[JLS]

I do know one form of passive listening that works. If there's an audio/video in a foreign language that I know well because I took the time to translate it, I can passively listen to that over and over and catch some benefit, even if I'm doing something else. It's less ideal than a full focus listen, but it does some good.

[MaggieMae]

To agree with the majority here, bit also add something that happened to me personally:

I've been listening and singing along to Swedish music since late 2019. Looking up translations, trying to figure out what it means, tried and failed at Duolingo. (Come to think of it, I quit Duolingo right around the same time as I started listening to music.)

I didn't learn Swedish. Big surprise. /s

HOWEVER, I started taking Swedish lessons last year, and one thing my teacher said was different than pretty much all of her other beginning students was that my pronunciation and general feeling of the language was much better (not perfect by any means, but still better). So I wouldn't say my time spent listening was wasted, but I wouldn't say I learned the language like that, either. And as soon as I started actual lessons, my comprehension of those same songs skyrocketed.

So it really depends on your goals. Are you wanting to introduce yourself to the language, but don't have the time to dedicate to learning? I'd think that just listening won't harm anything until you have the time to dedicate properly. However, if you want to actually learn something because you're impatient or overachievers like the rest of us, I'd follow the advice everyone else has already given.

[M23]

I'm busy 13 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The only time I have for Portuguese is when I eat dinner, which is my one meal for the day. That's in the last hour before I go to sleep.

While I realise you're under a severe time crunch. I still think the DLI course, or listening to Pimsleur would be better for you. Pimsleur lessons are only 30 minutes long, and they are all audio. So you could eat and listen at the same time.

This. I was going to say that when you are just starting out with a language use Pimsleur audio. Most of the time I have been able to find these courses at my local library, and if you cannot find them there use Prospector (which gives you a greater span of libraries to select from). Those courses teach you vocabulary, pronunciation, and how to think in your target language. There's nothing you have to prepare to get it going, so it is an easy start. It will also keep you busy for quite awhile.