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Progressing in Portuguese

© Anne Duguid

When first starting out on new language learning, everything is exciting. Each new word learned and used is a bonus. We reach euphoric heights when we are understood in shops, restaurants and tourist offices.

Travelling by public transport is no longer a chore but a joy when we have managed to buy our tickets and reach the right--or let's face it--any destination. It is all part of the great adventure.

There are always useful helping hands for keen beginners. The objectives are manageable, easily assessed.

Problems in language learning, as with any form of study, are apt to arise in the Intermediate level. Adult learners are extraordinarily hard on themselves. They expect to jump instantly from survival level to proficiency, to be able to express themselves as fluently and easily as they would in their first language.

Students who have happily reached survival level building on basic learning through vocabulary and phrases pass away in horror before the dreaded word Grammar.

Those who have doggedly mastered the grammar of the beginning stages feel they have reached a plateau that extends limitlessly before them.

This is the stage when a minimum of a month in Portugal or a Portuguese speaking country would extend your language learning progress dramatically. Ai de mim,(pronounced I de meeng and meaning alas), this is hardly ever possible, especially at the time we most need it.

So, how can we progress?

We can stick laboriously to our book learning, use CD Roms or carry on with our Internet studies but the range of possibilities and variation is far smaller for the Intermediate student. It is vital for the Intermediate student to extend experience, learn grammar through books but also follow it in action, in its use in the real world.

We all need feedback, to be able to assess our progress or analyse the reasons for the lack of it. Sometimes it is simply that the brain needs time to process the new information so that it becomes second nature in use. We may have learned all our simple past tenses but they may not be well enough embedded for us to use them without thinking.

It may be that we make things difficult by thinking that they are difficult.

Try "http://members.tripod.com/~LHSWorldLang/...". This is a site based on a book which is part of a course run by Cial, the Portuguese Centro de Linguas. However, there are lists of basic vocabulary you can learn through games and a Conversation section which could be a useful start for an Intermediate leap from the plateau.