Learning portuguese: Goal C1

Hello, I came back after 4 years jajaja WTF? how's that even possible? About the log, I abandoned Portuguese and language learning in general, I had depression, the other daughter of my dad died, I moved to another country alone to live off the grid in the middle of nowhere, crazy shit happened you know? hahahaha Then I was in a desert in south america and I met a bunch of Brazilians, they were so nice to my and my poor management of the language, so, among all other things I came back home and decided to push my Portuguese forward and get a masters scholarship in Brasil, so, here's me again. I really really love this site, it's extremely useful, I send my appreciation to the team, and I hope to see us around more often. I'll come back in a week I guess (?

Welcome back HolaIsabel! That's quite a story.

Thank you for the welcoming, yeaah! I was super surprise it has been 4 years since that post, and a lot of things happened in between, weeeelll I have been maintaining my streak so far  

Hello ! ok, so  

I'm maintaining my streak so far, I have done grammar exercises and reading (here obliviously xd) and immersing with youtube videos every single day! Some days I do more than others but I manage to stay connected to this goal. So:

• I'm working on a project, I'm doing a notion page where I review all my language learning resources, I have been doing it for a while now in my notes app (Simplenote), I was thinking about sharing them (the reviews) here for people looking for sources with texts to import to this site (because I would like to share them but I keep them private for copywrite so I wanted to people to be able to use them on their own), but then i think about maybe publishing on reddit and relating the links here in my logs, and THEN i think i would do something more compelling and easy to reference, so it became a page in notion because I audit a shit ton of resources among all these years. So I started doing it, I don't think about sharing it just yet because I have only reviewed two resources there yet (I did that today), but I hope in a couple of days or weeks I'll be sharing something useful there.
• In the mean time I can log that I found this week the Portuguese with leo Intermediate Portuguese Podcast (PT-PT) and it's FREE and has a LOT of material, more than 100 episodes, like 30 min each with transcripts, all in his website, that's some really good content a resource, let's see if I'll stick to it.
• I guess years ago I saved this playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4072lBN3nmhJKchgpbYUPU?si=0135af072ae7480b) and just this week i listened to it, it's excellent! hahaha I like it a lot, I wasn't enjoying the Portuguese playlist in spotify bc they are all bosa-nova and i understand this genre is a huge gift from Brasil to the world but I'm not a fan, but Funky???? that's my jam kkkkkk
• I'm in two whatsapp groups for language exchange, i haven't get too much practice from there yet, but I find them interesting so far.

talking about other languages

• I'm writing this in ENGLISH :flag-us: right? so that's practice hahaha i consume everything in English so immersion is not my problem, producing is, I don't seek opportunities to speak and certainly feel lazy when writing so I'm using this space to do it and push my self (if you see any terrible grammar mistake pls point it out I would appreciate it, I'm supposed to be a B2)
• I started using the Wlingua app for ITALIAN :flag-it:. I love the methodology of that app (I can't stand translating everything in duolingo) but I haven't use it everyday, just a couple of days this week, I'm very focus in my PT so i don't punish myself for this, I'm starting slow. 

Are you going to learn both Brazilian and European Portuguese?

I started learning Brazilian PT really intensively in 2019-2020, but recently I have fallen in love with PT-PT so i decided to change my focus. I have more Brazilian friends that Portugal ones but I actually feel better with the PT-PT pronunciation, it fits me better, that's my opinion right now, idk in the future, but for now I'm focusing on PT-PT, which is not all good because the difference between the amount of material available is ridiculous, but, I'm fine by now. What do you think about changing regions leo? have you done it?

HolaIsabel wrote:

What do you think about changing regions leo? have you done it?

I think it's fine; you've got to follow your passion. I haven't done it though. Tbh, my Portuguese (Brazilian) disappeared when I started learning Italian. I plan to re-learn it in the near future. But even at my highest level, near B2, I couldn't understand European Portuguese. I'm surprised at how different they are.

leosmith wrote:

HolaIsabel wrote:

What do you think about changing regions leo? have you done it?

I think it's fine; you've got to follow your passion. I haven't done it though. Tbh, my Portuguese (Brazilian) disappeared when I started learning Italian. I plan to re-learn it in the near future. But even at my highest level, near B2, I couldn't understand European Portuguese. I'm surprised at how different they are.

Yess, I have being training my ear like a beginner again to understand os portugueses. But so far, I am enjoying it and I see myself more consistent about it than when I tried PT-BR  

Hello! New week, so..

 

• I have been able to keep my streak! 2weeks I'm so happy for that, I keep it in this app so I have to read at least the minimum each day, but I do other things too.
• Textbooks:
• I tried Português em Foco, compared it to: Falar…Ler… Escrever Português (PT-BR) / Aprender Português / Entre nós and the one I liked the most was Português em foco, BUT the book didn't come with the answers, not answer key or anything I would have to buy the teacher's book, so I was really disappointed and frustrated so I stopped using it because not being able to get feedback on the exercises made zero sense to me, how would i know if I was making any mistakes? 
• Note: the textbook is made for use in classrooms, I even tried to have Chatgpt give me the feedback but it was too much extra work
• So I found the book series "Portuguese para todos" that is for Spanish speaking people learning PT-PT and I loved it. The structure and aesthetic are...... let's say..... vintage hahahaha but the content is good and is not boring, it comes with audios and the ANSWER KEY so I have been using it everyday of the week, I am enjoying it so far, it has a lot of explanations but it's about getting used to the way the authors thought the book trough. 
• I paid for one moth of PortuguesePod101 premium, totally not worth it, the lessons are pretty basic, even the advanced level is so easy it makes no sense, you get English explanations even when you say you are upper intermediate, and I was expecting it to come monolingual or I thought that if maybe the material was advanced enough the explanations in English would be necessary but nope, I refuse to spend half of my PT time listening to English ??? I don't find the vocabulary on the lessons complex or rich enough, It wasn't my most intelligent decision to spend the money there actually, I should have done my research first and used their 7 day free trial to see that the material wasn't for me.
• I got a Portuguese friend via reddit hahahaha I speak only with Brazilians, he's my first approach to speak with PT-PT so far everything good, just the differences with the time zone what makes difficult to arrange calls.
• This coming week I'll have my first PT exchange group call that I organized bc the whatsapp groups weren't very active at all, so let's see how it develops :see_no_evil: 
• Still in love with Portuguese with leo podcast, I haven't listened to too many episodes but it's because they are longggg, I am still enjoying them.
• The PT language-learning-resources-reviewed-page still a work in progress, 4 resources so far but I am enjoying the process.

Other langs:

• This is still the only writing practice I do xdxd I am reading two books in EN and encountering new vocab, but i just save the words in my kindle, not studying them yet
• Like 10 min of Wlingua app this week ?????? pretty bad xd I don't know what to do to not mix PT and IT 

Wow - that's quite a routine. Congrats on your streak! 

Hello! New week so... 

 

• I arranged a video call with a group of people that are learning Portuguese and invited some Brazilians. It was a small video call and it went very good because everyone had the chance to talk, it was very interesting, we learn a lot, and everyone enjoyed it, they even asked me to repeat it this week and actually it is taking place again today in two hours. I was kinda bumped because the whatsapp groups I joined weren't active in activities and the paid language learning community I joined months ago closed, but I took iniciative over it and so far is going well, we are going to add an English exchange session on monday 18 because my speaking is really rusty.
• I'm still using <<Português para todos 1>>, is a very nice book, once you get the rhythm and the pattern of the activities is like butter, of course sitting down to study with a book requires discipline but I genuinely think, so far, that this is the best book to learn Portuguese from Portugal for Spanish speakers (is this phrased correctly?).
• In the reunion we found out that there's a version of a very very VERY popular Mexican TV show called "El chavo del 8" but in brazilian portuguese!!!! I was like WHAAT hahaha it's so strange to see that because I grow up watching el chavo in tv, i always associated it to mexico, and they have a lot of memes and words that they invented and are references to the show so we were all very curious to know how the dubbing team solve the issue about the invented words. I haven't sat down to watch it because I totally forgot about it until now that I'm revising my notes for this weekly log hahahaha so... good
• My biggest concern this week: VOCAB
• I have been reading everyday, doing my drills, correcting my grammar, everything good, now I see on this app that I have more that 400 words saved like "learning" haha but I don't do anything with them nor the other words I have on my notebook. So my approach is:
• Right now I write whole sentences always in my notes, and continue with the exercises of the book, then I come back to the sentences, recall the word I was meaning to learn, highlight it and test myself for the first time writing it's Spanish translation in a light brown pen. 
• What I want to do next: I want to take the words for each day and make a "Clozemaster" similar type of review on Anki. I already made the set up, with an excel and then the cards in anki that resemblance the clozemaster type of exercises. I did it for two days and it went fine, let's see.
• I also tried "ListLang", a kinda clozemaster app but with more capabilities in the free version but wasn't my cup of tea.
• I am certainly not taking the 400 words and making anki flashcards asjdkjakfs that would be a waste of time, I will make them by passages from now on, with my new readings, if a word is really important it will come again.
• Why is it so hard to make the nasal accent in the keyboard???????? it's killing me everytime kkkkk
• I found the "A Portuguesa" youtube channel, she uploads videos about the Portugal history and OMG are they difficult to understand!! she got real subtitles now so I'll be using them here on LC but gsus

English  

• I finished the series "Only Murders in the Building" (Disney+) and was kinda intentional about enriching my English, I think Selena Gomez is gorgeous in the series, I'm looking forward the next season
• Getting my first language exchange session next week to dust off my speaking
• Doing this logs religiously to get my writing going! I feel very good because I consume a shit ton of content in English every day and I feel this is when those expressions come out, see the light! hahaha

Italiano  

• ItaWHAT? jsflajelajfask lol I was confusing it too much with portuguese because the language is still not solid in my brain, so i totally dropped it. I'll pick it up again later.

 

• I watched a video about the Polyglot conference, what an interesting event....

Hi!!! New week

So...

 

I haven't continue studying every. single. day. but I have been actively maintaining the language AND doing a sacred language exchange session every week on Wednesdays 6pm EST with friends from Brasil, Portugal, united states, Angola, french Guyana, Colombia and mexico. I do that every week without excuses. I have been following new Brazilian youtubers to immerse myself more easily. Steady but firm, I want to continue using the book "Portugues para todos I" I have been enjoying it's explanations and exercises a lot.

English

 

I'm also doing a language exchange session every monday, it has been really productive for me, it keeps me motivated to improve my English and my speaking. We are talking about fields of expertise, favourite things, countries, and the next session will be about the language learning experience and theories around it.

I decided to do this logs less often :) But i hope my constancy with my learning continues. Thank you all!!