I've been going pretty hard at the Portuguese Practice so far this year, aiming for two hours a day of some sort of practice.
I even opted to pay for private lessons, online - and I went with my usual strategy of digging around and finding a competent, small-business - and after not too much research I found 'Portugues Language Lessons' - which is 48 EU a month for one private half hour lesson a week on Zoom, with worksheets, and extension work, and all the 'self-directed' study material too.
I did want group classes, but they were already full for my level, they are cheaper.
But you know 24 EU or £20 an hour for private tuition of any kind isn't bad, and it's all aimed at getting you speaking (and listening) which is great, and it's a small business which I really like too.
And they have two weekly chat groups, including a reading group which meet online for an hour each, so even more practice.
Trust me, I spend 20 years in teaching and then went on to train people how to teach, these people do most things right..... they're not perfect, but for an independent private training company, they've got a pretty good handle on the basics of good teaching practice.
Pimsleur courses
In addition to this I also bought a Pimsleur Portuguese course on the recommendation of a friend - this is exclusively listening and speaking.
Each lesson is 30 minutes long and consists of an initial dialogue between two people and you just follow along, repeating after one or the other people two or three times.
Each lesson centres around about 12 lines of dialogue, very short sentences - but the responses you're asked to give also draw on previous lessons.
It's very basic, but I can listen and speak along while I'm doing work on the land which is great, today's lesson got a bit tedious though - it was about two people arranging what time to go and have coffee...
It was 30 minutes of...
- 'do you have time for a coffee now'
- 'not now, no, how about 14.30?
- 'no, i can't, how about tomorrow'
- 'Yes, tomorrow is good, how about 10.30'
- 'No.. you get the drift, then another time'.
OK it wasn't just that, but there was A LOT of time talk in it, but it's good, you just listen and repeat over and over again, and it's great for solidifying questions especially.
I'm a little annoyed at myself in a way because there's only one level of European Portugues on Pimsleur, I probably should have gone for the Michel Thomas method instead - it's a similar price for a similar thing, but there are two levels.
Practice Portuguese
I'm also keeping up my practice with Practice Portuguese - so YES, I subscribe to TWO language learning services!
They have some great flash cards for going over basic phrases and some great listening exercises which a perfect for learning nouns, AND a translate function, for European not Brazilian Portuguese.
Big Brother and News on the Radio
Big Brother is on ATM - and that's great for language practice - there are frequently captions up which give an indication of what's going on, which helps with picking out words.
And I'm starting to pick out more words on the radio - I'm quite good with verbs now, but nouns are a problem, I really must learn more nouns, necessary for actually understanding the meaning.
And FINALLY.... daily life phrases...
One of the good things about having face to face lessons is that they make you talk about yourself - a quite common task is to do a brief exercise, like 'what's in your bag* 'and then make you discuss what's in your own bag *
- Although when I started talking about IOTA, Crypterium, WAVES etc. she had no idea what I was talking about!
I'm also getting into the habit of just going over and over basic stuff about my life - my job, my land plans, what I like and so on.
Final Thoughts
I think I'm actually getting somewhere - still hopeless at picking out most words in general conversation and I still have almost no idea what people are talking about, but I did understand that my shopping today cost '19 Euros and eighty eight cents' - I actually heard it all, correctly.
At this rate of progress I should be able to have a conversation with my neighbour by 2023 at the latest!