Tag: C2

Posted in English

Como Correu a Segunda Semana?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

E o que fica por fazer na terceira?

Raw Exam Prep

  1. Do the exam modelos Cristina gives me Hm, I’ve only done one so far. Not very impressive.
  2. 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 Na, sod that for a game of soldiers. Honestly, it’s an enormous list and full of set phrases you’re supposed to use and I honestly don’t think I’ve even seen most of them in the books I’ve read, or heard them said anywhere. Afinal, empreguei a arte subtil de saber dizer que se foda.

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. Been a bit lax with this one, I’m afraid!
  • 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. Rekindled marital lusophonia and managed a few exchanges. 
  • Daily Anki deck usage

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. Managed to finish a couple of books this week!
  • Podcasts – Portuguese only till after the exam. I might even unsubscribe to some of the english language ones to remove temptation. Listening to quite a lot of audio this week: mostly on youtube, but also some episodes of Extremamente Desagradável
  • 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. Contrary to what I said last week, I decided that the repetition was useful and I find myself digging deeper into expressions I hadn’t really noticed before. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it now. 4? 5? I am pleased with my choice. It is a good film. The cafe scene is brilliant.

Exercises

This weekend

  • Start final chapter of Português em Foco done
  • “Puzzle Brain” activity – listen to portuguese audio while doing a jigsaw Finished the second puzzle and thinking of doing a third. A Viúva is doing my head in though. It is very different from Saramago’s other work, but that wouldn’t matter if I was using a better player. Bertrand’s audio app is pants. It crashes for no reason and when you open it again it has forgotten where you were and opens at the start or wherever you last left a bookmark or at some random place, and you have to spend ages finding the right place again. Infuuuuuuriating!

W/E 27-10-2024

  • Finish Português em Foco exercises in the main book (meant to do these before Lisbon really, but…) done
  • Start the (self marked) grammar exercises in the Caderno de Exercícios done

W/E 03-11-2024

  • Finish the grammar exercises in the Caderno de Exercícios Done
  • “Scuba Diving” exercises with text and audio of “Amor de Perdição” Not done. I did the extra Eat Rep instead and I don’t think that was a good choice.

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!
Posted in English

E Afinal, Como Correu a Primeira Semana?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Happy first day of GMT. Here’s all that sun you missed. 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞

Marking off what I’ve done from the plan I made.

Raw Exam Prep

  1. Do the exam modelos Cristina gives me Done only 2 exercises form the first.
  2. 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 Started but… Oh my god, it’s absolutely massive!

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. Doing pretty well with this!
  • 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. Only one day of this so far
  • I also started an Anki Deck for unfamiliar vocab
  • Went back to revise some of my favourite past blogs – like this one for example. I feel like I did a better job than most basic level explainers written by native speakers – bug claim, I know, but they tend not to be very nuanced and I unpacked a lot of weird stuff that gets left out. I um (checks notes) understood the assignment. I (checks notes again) ate and Er… Left no crumbs. (peers at notes a third time)… Slay!

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. I’ve read lots and written a few reviews too
  • Podcasts – Portuguese only till after the exam. I might even unsubscribe to some of the english language ones to remove temptation. Lots of audio going on at the moment, including some really difficukt regional accents
  • 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. Two and a half run-throughs  so far and I’m enjoying it. Part of me wants to move to another film though because I notice myself not paying enough attention because I already know the gist of the plot. Should I trust the process or my instincts? 🤔

Exercises

This weekend

  • Start final chapter of Português em Foco done
  • “Puzzle Brain” activity – listen to portuguese audio while doing a jigsaw enjoyed this much I have started a second puzzle and a second audiobook – A Viúva by José Saramago

W/E 27-10-2024

  • Finish Português em Foco exercises in the main book (meant to do these before Lisbon really, but…) done
  • Start the (self marked) grammar exercises in the Caderno de Exercícios done (4 chapters in)

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!
Posted in Portuguese

Quarta-feira e Quinta-feira

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Mais uma atualização sobre o meu progresso.

Já terminei o Português em Foco (yasss!!! Fico tão feliz!). Vou continuar com os exercisio da gramática mas quanto aos conteúdos do livro, não tenho de criar mais documentos no GDrive, nunca mais. Estou livre! Hoje é o meu dia 25 de Abril.

Ouvi mais áudios portugueses mas menos do que nos dias passados, terminei o livro de Mário de Carvalho (a opinião segue-se amanhã) e mais uma visualização d’Os Gatos Não Têm Vertigens. Estou a gostar cada vez mais, apesar dos defeitos. O final é muito comovente.

Hoje de manhã fiz mais uma aula. Esqueci-me de trazer o meu cartão de Bingo, e como resultado esqueci-me de abrir o jogo com “Bem disposto?”. Ainda por cima, não tive oportunidade de encerrar a conversa com “boa continuação”. Porquê? Eh pá, foi mesmo chato: terminámos cedo porque Ian Internet desapontou-nos. Mas há males que vêm para o bem: logo depois, tive uma conversa com a Catarina em português (um acontecimento raríssimo!). Caso queiras saber, ela estava bem disposta (mas cansada).

A minha palavra nova do dia é “vadio”, que é tipo “preguiçoso” mas mais enfatica – em inglês diríamos “layabout”. Usou-a para descrever determinados colegas dela que não fazem nada, mas fingem estar gastos por estar tão, mas mesmo tão atarefados durante o turno inteiro.

Eis o cartão de Bingo.

Marquei um miserável 8/16. Buuu. São palavras/expressões comuns de que me esqueço sempre porque fico preso num trilho de palavras aborrecidas. Digo “OK” em vez de “tá bem” ou “certo” que não é errado mas é preguiçoso. Igualmente “se não” em vez de “caso contrário”, “pegar em” em vez de “segurar”, Sim, sim, sim, em vez de pois, pois, pois é, e assim por diante.

Posted in Portuguese

Mais 2 Dias

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Nos últimos dias, completei o puzzle, ouvindo mais áudio português, incluindo alguns episódios do Assim e Assado com Marco Neves e Sam the Kid. É uma série ótima!

Terminei um livrinho e estou quase a chegar ao fim da coleção de contos que estava a ler em Lisboa.

Tenho 6 exercícios do PEF no saco.

Finalmente, criei um cartão de Bingo com várias palavras para usar na próxima aula. Acho que sou capaz de terminar o PEF amanhã, e depois passo para o primeiro modelo.

Posted in Portuguese

Dia 2

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Comecei o trabalho de investigar os conceitos necessários para o C2. Que chatice.

Escrevi um texto e fiz um exercício de audição com o Fado de Estudante (coisa horripilante: não entendi muito)

Fiz mais Puzzle Brain e ouvi mais um audiolivro (“Faz-te Homem!” de Luis Coelho ) A mesa está cheia de franceses!

Finalmente, tendo ignorado os exercícios estruturados durante o dia inteiro, lancei-me ao último capítulo do PEF, sobre Fernando Pessoa.

Posted in English

Plans

Posted on by Colin Lusk

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

  1. Do the exam modelos Cristina gives me
  2. 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

    Posted in English, Portuguese

    The Red Hot Silli Preppersitions

    Posted on by Colin Lusk

    More corrected exercises from Português Outra Vez

    Grammar, we love you

    Quando elas vierem a casa, lembra-lhes para regarem as flores no rés do chão.

    Eu faltei aos ensaios e, por isso, não vou em digressão pelo Canadá. (I actually feel like my wrong answer wasn’t totally wrong: dedicar-se was an option so I put “dedico-me aos”. I feel like that works but the book says no No, apparently not, because the ensaios are rehearsals for the tour. Duh!)

    O pai do nosso amigo Charles valeu-se do cargo que ocupa para lhe arranjar trabalho no Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros.

    O presidente faltou à palavra e adotou essa lei discriminatória

    Levantei-me as cinco de manhã; faltou pouco para amanhecer.

    Thanks to Cristina for spotting the typos & the misunderstanding in the first version.

    Posted in English, Portuguese

    Exercícios Lacunares

    Posted on by Colin Lusk

    Now that I’ve finished Qual É A Dúvida I’ve returned to the bloody awful, boring “Português Outra Vez“, aimed at C1/C2 level students. On the face of it, there’s no reason it should be so dull: both books are just page after page of exercícios lacunares (missing word problems), but they’ve ordered it into three sections and within each section they’re all the same *kind* of missing words. I’m currently part way through 60 pages of verb+preposition. I have a copy of the Guia Prático de Verbos com Preposições for any that I don’t already know. Helena Ventura is co-author of both books, so the examples are often quite similar.

    Now, that much repetition could be useful if it was drilling the variations of dar+preposition or passar+preposition but there’s surprisingly little repetition of those. Dar appears just twice, I think, and ser, passar, ficar seem only to be there once. Instead we’re doing easy things like gostar de, precisar de, plus some fairly obscure ferns that only ever take one preposition anyway. It’s not ideal and I am finding it much harder to stay motivated. I’ll see how it goes but I might just open a window and fling it at the pigeons outside.

    The other two sections are expressões idiomáticas and vocabulário. I feel like this is all good meat-and-potatoes stuff, necessary for building core competencies for the advanced exam, so I hope the pigeons enjoy it.

    More practically, I suppose I should hope between sections to break up the monotony or something.

    Aaaaanyway, enough moaning. I’m writing out some that I got wrong, hoping they’ll stick in my mind better:

    Não Conseguimos convencê-lo; ele torce pelo Benfica e não muda de ideias. I got torcer por, but failed to realise that Benfica needed a definite article. Torcer por =Ser adepto de = to be a supporter of

    Todas as pessoas devem ser compassiva e solidárias, olhando a quem está em situação de pobreza e depende da ajuda dos outros. Again, i got the right formula – olhar a – but I used the imperativo. That probably would have worked if there were a full stop after “solidárias” but it doesn’t make sense as it is and I should have rethought it. Olhar a =ter em consideração =to look out for

    Quantas costeletas tocam a cada pessoa? Parecem-me poucas para tanta gente. I had no clue here and just guessed badly. Tocar a = calhar a =to… Hm, it’s a difficult one to translate neatly but the whole sentence is like “How many cutlets are there for each person”. It can also mean “to have to do with” or “to compete for”

    O António foi falar com o chefe e foi pedir-lhe pela colega da receção, para que o chefe a promovesse, pois ela merecia. I got the wrong end of the stick with this one. I didn’t realise Antonio was a worker in the same firm. I thought he was a customer who was recommending the receptionist for promotion. Conseqiently I messed it up. Pedir por =interceder a favor de= to ask on behalf of, to act as an intermediary.

    Há pessoas tão ambiciosas que não olham a meios para atingir os fins. I missed the relevance of this. And used “ser contra” instead. Olhar a =atender a = care about. So in this case they don’t care what means they have to use to achieve their ends. We’ve all met people like that, eh? Some people are so ambitious to be a good portuguese students they will even stoop to doing the actual exercises diligently.

    Não compares um Ferrari com um Toyota! São completamente diferentes! I used a in place of com. Classic overliteral translation from English. Compare x WITH y, not x TO y. Comparar com = colocar em igualdade com =Make a comparison. The way this is phrased implies that the comparison will always be of equality, but priberam is much closer to the English notion of comparing. Ie, you can make an unfavourable comparison, but even though “this is a million times better than that” is a comparison, people will often be opposed to you comparing Shakespeare to Dan Brown or whatever, feeling that Shakespeare is somehow demeaned by being spoken of in the same breath as such a terrible writer, and I assume that’s what’s going in in the example.

    Posted in English

    CAPLE Exam Prep Lessons: Review

    Posted on by Colin Lusk

    I mentioned a while ago that I was starting the Say it in Portuguese CAPLE Exam Prep course. I thought it would be worth taking a really focussed course to try and get myself match fit instead of winging it. In case anyone is in the same boat, thinking of taking it for a future exam, here’s what it’s like:

    The course took place over 4 weeks because that’s how long I had from enquiring to the date of the exam. Following an introductory meeting, Cristina offered a range of three options, based on what I said my weak points were. There were different levels/prices, depending how much support I wanted and I went with the middle one. I won’t say what the prices were in case it’s a trade secret, but I’d definitely call it very good value.

    As you might already know, there are four sections in the exam*, and I felt reasonably comfortable with the reading comprehension but decidedly iffy about some of the others, so the really important stuff for me was in the form of four weekly drops of one sample paper from the written part of the exam and a recording and set of multiple choice questions from the aural comprehension section. I completed them in my own time and emailed them back. Very detailed feedback would then arrive the following day for me to work through.

    On Fridays we had an online meeting where we’d go through some of the homework feedback and also did a simulated parts 1 and 2 of the “produção e interação orais” exam format. Mistakes made in the meeting would prompt more feedback via email, including actually recording the lesson and doing a step-by-step feedback recording that I could listen to and hear my mistakes.

    Cristina does other courses and she’s also host of one of the earliest portuguese podcasts, so she’s an experienced teacher, but I think I was one of the early adopters on this specific DAPLE course, and there were a couple of teething troubles – a few typos in the questions – which I fed back and will no doubt have been corrected by the time the next person takes the course. In the post-exam debrief, I also suggested she might change the order the aural papers were given in, since I think the first one was a real past paper and the later ones were close simulacra. They were very good recordings and sounded almost exactly like real exam questions, but the questions were a tiny bit less ambiguous and tricksy, so I thought maybe it would be better to start with those and finish on the real past paper.

    The course definitely boosted my confidence and helped me approach the exercises in a more controlled, less panicky way. Yeah, the exam could have gone better, but it could have gone worse too, and it definitely would have if I hadn’t done the course! I would definitely recommend it to anyone planning on taking a CAPLE exam, especially if you’ve never taken one before and are not familiar with the format.

    * = And if you don’t already know about the structure, here’s the description of the most recent C1 exam and here’s the first – the B1.