OK, the exam is on the 13th of November. To be honest, I wish I’d gone for May next year, but here we are… I’m going to be taking another of the Say It In Portuguese CAPLE Exam preparation courses. I need to use the remaining time wisely so I’m going to try and cut out a lot of unnecessary stuff, put a few things on hold till the second half of November to make more time for learning, especially listening and speaking (using some of the techniques this fella lays out in this video) and I’ll add this lot to my Planner app:
Raw Exam Prep
- Do the exam modelos Cristina gives me
- Go through the list of key structures in the C2 syllabus here, and try and figure out what I need to work on, possibly in the lessons
Just general tidying
- I have some lists of structures I often get wrong and structures that get used a lot in portuguese that I never use because I keep forgetting about them, so try and make sure I get as many of them as possible into blog posts instead of just treading the same old familiar linguistic pathways that I rely on in everything I write.
- Try and bribe my wife to speak to me in her beguiling madeiran accent. Poached eggs will probably work. She loves a good poached egg.
General Input
- Reading – I have an english book I am committed to reading for family book club and a couple of audiobooks that I am already part way through, but when those are finished, no new english books, just portuguese ones. Probably not many though, because I don’t really need much practice – just bedtime reading, and just things that seem like they will expand my brain. Like I have a Gil Vicente play in BD form, but I looked at it earlier and it’s much too archaic so I’ll save it for after the exam.
- Podcasts – Portuguese only till after the exam. I might even unsubscribe to some of the english language ones to remove temptation.
- Eat-Rep exercises – I’m going to drop some of the morning quizzes I do and watch a quarter of Os Gatos Não Têm Vertigens instead – that’s about two watches per week. try to do some “scratching” in the first weeks and move toward “copycat” exercises in later weeks.
Exercises
This weekend
- Start final chapter of Português em Foco
- “Puzzle Brain” activity – listen to portuguese audio while doing a jigsaw
W/E 27-10-2024
- Finish Português em Foco exercises in the main book (meant to do these before Lisbon really, but…)
- Start the (self marked) grammar exercises in the Caderno de Exercícios
W/E 03-11-2024
- Finish the grammar exercises in the Caderno de Exercícios
- “Scuba Diving” exercises with text and audio of “Amor de Perdição”
W/E 10-11-2024
Non-thorough run through of the paper exercise books I have, looking for grammar exercises that look like they might be beneficial.
- The remainder of the vocabulary and verb tenses sections of Português Outra Vez, (the expressões section is rubbish and I can’t be bothered with it)
- The C1 sections of “Vamos Lá Continuar” and
- Some of the more challenging exercises from Qual é a Dúvida. I finished this book ages but there were some exercises that left me floored, so I’ll be interested to see if I find them just as hard the second time around!
Exam Week!!!!
I’ll keep this free for whatever I think needs shoring up
