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Portuguese from Scratch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5065 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 17 of 26 06 June 2014 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
A transcript serves as a bridge. It also makes the incomprehensible comprhensible. There are many ways you can use it. Read first then listen. Listen first then read. Listen and read at the same time. Listen, then read, then listen again, etc. Eventually, after building critical mass in listening (preferably by listening for at least 10 minutes a day to not-intended-for-learners native audio) for a few months, you won't need or want a transcript any longer. The NHK World Portuguese newscast with transcript and Café Brasil both really helped me when I was learning. Good to see you like the DW LBE series. You can make your own bilingual texts by going to the English site for the same stories. The thing about different accents in a pluricentric language like Portuguese is that you want to become accustomed to them so that you're not thrown for a loop when you encounter it out in the world. Though I concentrate on Brazilian Portuguese, that's why I also have regular exposure to the African and Iberian varieties. You never know when you may find yourself in Portugal, like I did last January. It's just a matter of getting used to the accent and grammatical variation. I also recommend that you have a look at Era Uma Vez um Rei and A Aventura dos Descobrimentos from the Centro Virtual Camões (skip over the hokey songs). It's multimedia intended for children, reading with audio. The vocabulary and grammar aren't overly complex. You'll learn a lot of Portuguese from it and a lot about how Portuguese spread across the world. Spending some time on Iberian/African resources won't harm your accent or your grammar but will help you, in the long run, to understand the other side of the Lusophone world. Keep up the good work! Edited by iguanamon on 06 June 2014 at 2:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5064 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 18 of 26 06 June 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
jtdotto, thanks for your comments and sharing your experience. My main mistake was probably treating Assimil almost like a grammar-type textbook - attentively going through each chapter yes, but reviewing them only once or twice (at most) during the first run through. I also skipped the audio after the first dozen lessons since I found listening to what I already read rather distracting. Probably not the ideal way to use Assimil, at least not in the beginning stage. I could have gone on like this though, it was not too bad, but I had the feeling that I retained only little. I did retain a lot of the words and phrases, but never got deep enough into the grammar in order to really internalize it, that was what irked me, especially when more and more tenses and irregular verbs got introduced. Maybe I would have done good to keep a short grammar at hand and simply look up any unclear things and from time to time review the tables. But I use Assimil for Russian in a quite different manner - at a much slower pace, reviewing everything several times, and after a couple of days go through the previous chapters once more. I also make copious use of the audio. Often I just lie down on the bed and listen to it a couple of times before turning to the corresponding new chapter in the book. This helps and sometimes is actually relaxing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5032 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 19 of 26 10 June 2014 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||
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6/6-6/9
I brought in two more Assimil lessons, 26 and 27. I started my scriptorium regimen. My daily study goes as follows: Shadow 10 lessons a day Today - 17-27 (skipping 21, the review lesson) Today's newest lesson, 27, gets the 15-20 minute "repeat" treatment, where I listen and shadow over and over this lesson, after reviewing all the others once. (I'll write the lessons backwards from how I actually shadow them, so you can see the progression from newest lesson to oldest.) 27-26 - Read only the English while shadowing out loud 25-23 - Read the English + the Portuguese at the same time while shadowing out loud 22-19 - Read only the Portuguese whiling shadowing out loud 18-17 - Book is closed and shadow out loud Today was the first day I didn't shadow lesson 16 - lesson 16 is no longer part of my shadow regimen. It is now apart of my scriptorium regimen. My plan: On the day of lesson 27, return home after shadowing and listen to lesson 16 line by line and write it out on paper. Speak aloud as I write. Check for errors with the text in the book. On the day of lesson 29 (skip review lesson 28), return home after shadowing and translate lesson 16 from Portuguese to English. Check for errors with the book. Transcribe lesson 17 from the audio. On the day of lesson 30, return home after shadowing and translate lesson 16 from English back into Portuguese. Check for errors. Translate lesson 17 from Portuguese to English. Transcribe lesson 18 from the audio. At this point, lesson 16 will no longer be apart of my daily studying. I should have lesson 16 in my blood - the grammar, the vocab, the sentence structure. It's actually surprising to see how well I know the material in lesson 15 and 16, writing them out and translating them. Not only do I know every word, but as I write them, I can hear the voices from the recordings. The connection I made between the English dialogue and the Portuguese one seems to be very strong, because at this point, the Portuguese has a similar impact on me when reading it that it would if it was in English. So this is why Prof. Arguelles suggested this study routine... it doesn't seem like much the first couple days with a new lesson, but by the 11th day when I'm writing out the lesson by hand, there is an incredibly familiar feeling to the dialogue that tells me I have truly learned the language being used. I haven't really worked the last unit of the LL book, but I will soon. I think it's important to learn the subjunctive, but I would prefer to have the preterite and imperfect more solid in my head. I have trust that Assimil will piece those two tenses together in my head with patience, and then it's up to me to just work them in conversation and exercise. I've also noticed another great subtlety of Assimil, the way they work the small bits of language that are generally tough to master - prepositions and adverbs. They will throw in the same preposition in one lesson maybe 5-7 times... that doesn't seem like much, but multiply those 5-7 times by roughly 20 listens over the course of ten days, and then you've got over 100 hits on the same preposition. I could see myself doing 100 exercises of a preposition in a book and become very bored. Because it would become monotonous after a point. But with the daily burst of Assimil exposure to Portuguese, a critical mass is reached over 10 days and by that time, that preposition feels very routine, very natural to me in use and in listening. And I never truly "focused" on it, my only focus was on the lesson as a whole, as a slice of the language. I will be attending a Portuguese meetup this weekend. I'm excited to see how much I've progressed since my last time there one month ago. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5032 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 20 of 26 06 December 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I thought I'd give an update to this. Seems that I can't keep a consistent log going, which is too bad,
but that doesn't mean I haven't kept up the studying! Let's see, since June a lot has happened. I stopped using Assimil halfway through June because I felt like it had given me a good enough of a foundation in everything it excels at (pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, very short readings, some useful vocab, implicit grammar, common sentence structure) and I was ready to move onto a higher grade of material. I acquired Crônicas Brasileiras, a short story book intended for students from an English background, and Para a Frente!, an intermediate college textbook. I must admit, both were fairly daunting at first. I could only get through the first two short stories (both not more than a page long) before getting completely run down by the slog of vocabulary in the third story. The textbook's first couple chapters were doable, but again, once I hit the third chapter, things slowed down, and it was hard making progress. (I still think that You Speak Korean by Soohee Kim is one of the very best language textbook series that exists today for any language, and Para a Frente is definitely a far cry from it, but it's one of the better ones for Portuguese, at least based on my Googling) So I gave the books a rest and attended three meetups via Meetup.com, made regular use of Sharedtalk.com, and started an almost daily listening regimen of Ta Falado via Brazilpod (thanks again iguanamon! Your resources were greatly helpful!). Ta Falado focuses on the sounds of Brazilian Portuguese, and compares them to Spanish (but I pretty much just ignored the Spanish stuff because I never really learned Spanish phonology all that well), and I must say it helped a great deal. Though it didn't boost my ability to express myself, nor to understand, it did lay out the rules to pronunciation quite well. It very much reinforced what I picked up from Assimil, and gave me confidence to read new texts aloud with less head scratching than before. After exhausting Ta Falado (or at least my patience with it), I was ready to take on more grammar. Let's see, I started using Lingua da Gente, another resource from Brazilpod, that has dialogues between two speakers and then breaks them down afterward in Portglish, and this gave me a bit of a boost in listening and expression. I also started using Clica Brasil, also from Brazilpod, which is a fully functioning intermediate resource full of lessons for intermediate students, with videos of Brazilians speaking, analysis of popular song lyrics (Chico Buarque - Cotidiano), etc. It was great, but again, the lesson proper was still a bit out of my reach, but the videos helped a lot. Repeating the videos over and over allowed me to really hear what it was I was reading in the transcript. All the while I was speaking with my girlfriend everyday through text and Skype. I ended up visiting her in Paris for 2 weeks at the end of October, and while I was there we spoke plenty of Portuguese. I must admit, I felt quite limited with my expression, but she loved it, and when I got tired, we could slip right back into English, no problem. I felt a bit guilty having not really studied any French before going or while there, but I'm sure the French would forgive me if they saw me chatting in Korean with the servers at the Korean restaurant we went to, or the Portuguese I was speaking on the subway with my lady... Hopefully! Anyways, two weeks of using my Portuguese to it's very limit, hitting on the same grammar and vocab, picking up new stuff and using it right away, all this kind of brought me to a new level of global awareness with the language. When I returned, I opened up my books again and it felt much more in my reach. Now I can use the short story book to really engage the language profitably, and Conversa Brasileira, a Brazilpod production for intermediate students full of videos of natural conversations with pop up commentary, makes for great video study. Bouncing back and forth between the short stories, working each page until there's not a single unknown word that's not annotated, and taking notes from the Conversa Brasileiras, I feel like I've got a great routine going. I've also been listening to a lot of Brazilian music (Tom Jobim, Elis Regina, Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque, Raul Seixas) and been using Cifra Club and their lesson videos in Portuguese to learn songs on guitar, like Apesar de Você, Garota de Ipanema, Roda Viva, Aguas de Março, which is great fun and super inventive stuff to learn and know. Unfortunately I've lost use of my voice for about a month (I'm a songwriter and singer in a band, and I overdid it before and while I was in Paris, and have been doing voice rest for the last 3~4 weeks), so I haven't actually been able to speak... So I haven't met up with my Brazilian friends here for some time. That will soon change once I'm feeling better, and I really hope I'll feel a big difference in my conversation. Okay pessoal, até logo. Obrigado pela leitura~! Edited by jtdotto on 06 December 2014 at 2:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4969 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 21 of 26 09 December 2014 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Meus parabéns pelas suas conquistas no aprendizado da língua portuguesa! Muito interessante a maneira como você vem usado várias estratégias para continuar o seu aprendizado.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5032 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 22 of 26 11 December 2014 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Obrigado pelas amáveis palavras! Eu estou gostando muito de aprender esse belo idioma e a cultura
brasileira. Se você tiver algo para me recomendar como leitura, vídeos e áudios, por favor, me fale. Eu esqueci de falar que gosto de filmes brasileiros. Assisti ao filme "O cheiro do ralo" recentemente e gostei muito. Se você puder me recomendar filmes também, seria legal~! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4969 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 23 of 26 11 December 2014 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interessante, não conhecia esse filme. Selton Mello é um bom ator.
Os filmes mais conhecidos ultimamente são Central do Brasil, Cidade de Deus, Tropa de Elite (1 e 2). Deus é Brasileiro, Lisbela e o prisioneiro, O quatrilho, Carandiru, Meu tio matou um cara.Comédias: Se eu fosse você (1 e 2), Até que a sorte nos separe (1 e 2), De Pernas pro Ar (1 e 2), O Auto da Compadecida Séries: Os normais, A grande família, Toma lá dá cá, Os maias, O quinto dos infernos, A muralha. Leituras: eu só conheço até o pós-modernismo: Clarice Lispector, Rachel de Queiroz, Érico Veríssimo, contemporâneos Luiz Fernando Veríssimo, Rubem Braga. O Super Challenge não me deixa tempo pra ler autores brasileiros (apesar de que eu acabei de ler um livro de Clarice Lispector na tradução em alemão acompanhada do original). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tupiniquim Senior Member Brazil Joined 5886 days ago 184 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, Russian | Message 24 of 26 11 December 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Apoiado! Melhor seriado brasileiro de todos os tempos! (Seconded! Best Brazilian sitcom ever!) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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