|
 |
Portuguese from Scratch | ||
Tags: Portuguese | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 9 of 26 03 June 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The most thorough course I have ever used is DLI Portuguese Basic Course. It's outside the "usual suspects" of courses you see here.
Every course has its issues, DLI's are, age and imperfectly scanned pdf's. I solved the pdf issue by "optimizing" and "ocr'ing" the pdf's with my Adobe pdf writer software. The age of the course is solved by a multi-track approach where I got exposure to the language as it is spoken and written today. All in all, the age of the course is not that big a deal. What I liked about the DLI course is its comprehensive nature that includes reading, writing, speaking and most importantly, grammar drills. I also like that it is almost all monolingual (at least after unit 4). You don't have to worry about military dialog as there isn't any. I don't think there's a single course that doesn't have a hokey dialog, and, yes, DLI has one, but it is short with only about 10-12 lines to illustrate the points emphasized in the lesson. To me the Assimil dialogs are hokey. Obviously, no one would ever engage in such an artificially constructed conversation, but that's not the point.The point lies in getting comfortable with seeing how the language can be used in such situations to communicate. My problem with Assimil is that their hokey dialogs are the main point of the course. It's very grammar-light. You've solved that issue by going to LL for a more thorough take on grammar. As far as media for Portuguese (Brazil) goes, I would delay movies for now as learning tools and go instead for a series, when you reach intermediate level. Series have the advantage of continuity. You get used to characters, their accents, their speech as you go through 50+ episodes. I believe that this helps more with actual learning than "one-off" films, no matter how attractive they may be from an entertainment aspect. At your stage of learning, I was listening to the NHK Português Brazilian service news from Japan with a transcript. Open the audio in a new tab and click on the first story to follow along. Also, I was listening to and reading the transcript of Café Brasil. With complete transcripts and Luciano Pires' clear speech and varied topics of interest, you'll learn a lot at the same time as you do your course. The podcast is half an hour with over 400 podcasts archived. While I'm not an Assimil "fanboy", Assimil has been used successfully by many people to learn a language. It has many good points. I just happen to believe that the hype of the course and learners' expectations for the course can sometimes be so overwhelming that it's limitations can be overlooked. To your credit, you have noted that and are supplementing it with other resources. I don't have time to post all my resources for Portuguese but do a "g-search" for "iguanamon Portuguese" and you should be able to find them. Hint- the results that come up without clickable links can be copied and pasted into another search tab to give you that link. Yeah, it's a minor hassle, but that's HTLAL. The hassles are worth it for the information. Edited by iguanamon on 03 June 2014 at 10:13pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| FireViN Diglot Senior Member Brazil missaoitaliano.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5221 days ago 196 posts - 292 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2 Studies: Italian | Message 10 of 26 03 June 2014 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Movies - and TV shows - will usually be in colloquial language (which is the real deal,
except when writing). You could try some lighter, comedy movies, such as "Se eu fosse você". "Cidade de Deus" uses tons of slangs. If you wanna watch some TV shows, novelas, with subtitles, for free (most of the content, I guess), check Globo International out. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 11 of 26 03 June 2014 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Get linkification add-on or similar :) As for the OP and Portuguese... be sure to try GLOSS and lyricstraining ;) Honestly, they're awesome. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5221 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 12 of 26 03 June 2014 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks iguanamon for all the resources. I'm looking at DLI Portuguese right now, I'm excited to give it a try soon! You are right that pretty much all textbook dialogues are hokey - textbook dialogue is the very essence of contrived. I guess my gripe with LL's dialogues are that they are not ideal for shadowing, at least in the beginning stages. They are pretty long in content, with lots of items being listed by one of the speakers. And everyone is plain, the human element doesn't come out. Everyone is formal and stiff, even when the dialogues are between friends. Assimil's dialogues are just downright bizarre. My lady friend who is translating them for me into English, she often is scratching her head going "what exactly is going on here?". But I think that's the hidden genius in it - it requires that you come to the material and try to figure it out. And if you still can't figure out the who what or why of the dialogue, that time spent trying will have paid off in the end because it will be that extra level of engagement you put in. I still remember one dialogue where a guy was taking his kids out to the park and some friend asked if his wife was coming. He said no, she's got clothes to wash and dry. The friend responds "What a shame! I feel bad for her." - The husband responds "Really? It's just a matter of habit". When I read that I thought "wow, what a great husband you are..", which was me personalizing the dialogue a bit. I feel like that's what you want, you want to engage good, bad and weird personalities for shadowing, because that's what life is. Rather than a perfect world of lost hotel guests and all-knowing receptionists. Another one I liked was between two women. One was asking the other what she wanted from the market. The second responds with what she needs, and then the first asks if she's not coming this time. The seconds says no, she'll wait for her in the car - "Oh and could you get me one more thing!" What kind of friend is that? The first women then says in a low voice (it literally had "Em voz baixa") "I hate going to the market alone. Too much weight hurts my back, and I'm already old!". But then the bad friend redeems herself by saying she'll take care of the property tax and rent at the imobiliária. There's a nice human element to this. It's a weird thing to have an opinion about textbook dialogues, but when they're apart of your daily life, I guess it just can't be helped haha. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5253 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 13 of 26 04 June 2014 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||
|
Iguanamon has made some good points here. I concur that Assimil is surely not the best choice for everyone and for all purposes. It depends on the individual learner, his/her language background, and the quality of the course itself in what way or in what stage it can be made best use of. I would be hesitant to recommend it as a stand-alone method for the average beginner in a language.
I made use of Assimil manuals last year for getting some initial exposure to the Romance languages, but after a couple of weeks I realized that they don't provide me with a sufficiently structured outline of the grammar, with the uncomfortable result that what I learned simply didn't stick -- after about 35 lessons each I felt I was approaching a dead end or entering a nebulous territory. I was also mystified by the chaotic and early introduction of tenses and at that point still had no inkling of the meaning or relation between the various Spanish past tenses. Rather than going on with 'blind' learning and reviewing this dozens of times until some day I will find out I decided that I prefer to get it explained right away as soon as it gets introduced. Just now I work through a conventional grammar-oriented book on Italian, and this works much better. Even with a presumably easy language like Italian the amount of grammar and fine points to be thoroughly internalized is so heavy that I'm not sure I would achieve that by relying on Assimil alone. But I will get back to Assimil later -- they are essentially graded readers with explanatory notes and introduce you to loads of vocabulary and phrases. They also have nice audio. Some people find that Assimil works best for languages closely related to their own. In my case this would be languages like Swedish or Dutch. Probably here their intuitive approach works best, since the structure of related languages and many of the words are similar to what one already knows. For the Romance languages and for maximum benefit it might be best to already have a good knowledge of at least one Romance language before learning another one starting with Assimil. On the other hand I absolutely love their 1970s Russian course. The typical grammar-heavy courses on Russian scare me, but I find Assimil ideal for slowly growing into this language as a total beginner. It also has really good audio which is a joy to listen to. Without this course I would probably not have considered to learn Russian. I love it. For Portuguese Assimil has brought out 4 different courses all of which are beginner's manuals (two for European, two for Brazilian Portuguese). I have worked only with the old European one. It is a good and entertaining course, but with the same strengths and problem areas that are characteristic for so many Assimil courses. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4113 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 26 04 June 2014 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Most used tenses (in my opinion):
Presente ------------ Eu trabalho - I work Presente contínuo ------------------- Tenho trabalhado - I have been working Pretérito Perfeito ------------------- Eu trabalhei - I worked Pretérito Imperfeito ------------------- Eu trabalhava - I used to work* * this doesn't exist exacly in English, but it's a fair traslation for most of the sentences Futuro com o verbo ir - future with the verb to go) ------------------------------------------------------ Eu vou trabalhar - I will work Futuro do pretérito --------------------- Eu trabalharia - I would work Past continous with verb "estar" - remember that to be = "ser" or "estar" ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- Eu estava trabalhando - I was working Edited by Cristianoo on 04 June 2014 at 8:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4113 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 26 04 June 2014 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Please check this link. Check page 26. They have a nice table of verbs in portuguese x
english. eng lishconnected.pbworks.com 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5221 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 16 of 26 06 June 2014 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
|
6/3-6/5
Brought in 3 more Assimil lessons. I've now reached 10 lessons that I do a day (I went through the first 14 quickly because the audio was fairly slow). When I go on my walk to shadow, I'll begin with 15 and work all the way up until 25. 15-17 I'll just shadow it without the text, I know what is being said, and I am very comfortable with 97% of the pronunciation in those lessons. 18-20 I will shadow while focusing on the Portuguese, and pretty much the Portuguese only. Reading along as I speak aloud helps me internalize the sentence structure. 21-23 I shadow while focusing on both the Portuguese and English. I am trying to link the meaning of the English to the words and phrases in Portuguese. I'm not trying to make word to word connections, but rather idea to idea connections. X idea in English is Y idea in Portuguese. 24-25 are the newest lessons for me, and I focus just on the English, shadowing what I hear and trying to pick out the words as best I can, and trying my best at the unclear areas. I try to commit the English to a passive memory, and I believe this helps when I finally bring start looking at the Portuguese later on. This is a new method for me, so I'm still giving it some time to sink in and then I'll evaluate whether this kind of sectional study works or not. I am planning on bringing in a scriptorium method, to work the old lessons, to get the most out of all that time spent on them. I've been keeping up with my Anki decks and I've been practicing online with various Brazilians. Some of the resources posted in this thread have been incredibly helpful, and when I start actively pursuing some of those resources in my daily study, I will certainly write about it. In particular, I'm a big fan of the DW African fables in Portuguese - I just wish the pronunciation was of Brazil! Oh well. I still think I'm not quite to the point where podcasts or radio without the transcript will be more helpful than a headache, but I'm inching closer.
I'm curious as to what your study methods were with Assimil Kronos? You said you realized things weren't sticking after a couple weeks, but you went all the way up to lesson 35? So you spent over a month on it? Were you shadowing or just listening? Did you do review of past lessons, any scriptorium, any note taking? My own thoughts from this experience so far, and from past experiences with Assimil in German and Spanish: I've found that Assimil does not work if you do absolutely need things explained before jumping in. I've also found it doesn't work if you're the type of learner that get's anxious with ambiguity. And I've also found that yes, if you are jumping into a language with no background in learning or just knowing that language family, Assimil can be one hell of a mind-bender. That being said, I do think that Assimil is a staple of this site for good reason. Your observation was right on - it is a graded reader. And because of that, it does feel a bit like you're being plunged into native material right away, which is a great feeling to have, despite the overwhelming sensation. I believe that when used in tandem with a straight ahead grammar course, a vocabulary program, an exercise course, and interaction with natives, I think it stands out as an extremely useful resource. You're right that not every method is probably good, and not every good method is right for every learner. But I've found a nice rhythm with it for the time being, and I'm going to keep at it for as long as I can. Edited by jtdotto on 06 June 2014 at 9:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
