I came across another site via Twitter and a shared interest in Practice Portuguese. Urbangay covers Portuguese as one of its main strands- along with running and gay culture in general. If you are gay and studying Portuguese, you’ll almost certainly be interested in some of his posts on the history of gay life in Portugal, or on the Lisbon scene (have a look here), but even if you’re not, there are plenty of interesting blog posts, including one about language-learning resources. It covers some of the same ground as my “Language Hacks” post but he has some other ideas and I’ve plundered it for my own study. Go and have a look.
Tag: endorsement
Speaking Without Conversing
I eavesdropped on a webinar by Lindsay Dow and Shannon Kennedy in which they talk about how to start speaking and producing language when you aren’t ready to actually go head-to-head with another human yet. It’s something I’ve written about in an earlier post, because there is so much emphasis on speaking straight away in a lot of the language learning advice out there, so it was reassuring that two badass polyglots had dealt with the same issue too. They give some useful tricks for coaxing language out of yourself and developing some confidence.
The seminar is here for now but sadly it won’t be up for very long. Hi ho. You might be interested enough to follow up Shannon’s course on the subject, which is called “Say Goodbye to Shy“
Practice Portuguese
Contrary to what I said a while ago, it seems Joel Rendall and Rui Coimbra are still in business. It’s just that my iTunes has been having a funny turn and failing to get new episodes. They are producing new podcasts once a month, with (for paying members) transcriptions and vocab guides. I decided I’d go ahead and subscribe after all since – although one a month isn’t much – there is a whole back catalogue of good quality, and actually quite funny material on the site that you get access to when you subscribe.
Their website is here if you want to go and have a look.
Comentários Sobre Um Filme: Ossos
Estou a ver um filme de Pedro Costa que se chama “Ossos” para praticar a compreensão. Até a este ponto (vinte e dois minutos, treze segundos) houveram talvez quatro linhas do diálogo. Por isso, não aprendi muito até agora!
Além disso, actores: parem de resmungar! Falem claramente!
After I wrote this, it didn’t get much better. There are great long stretches in which people
- brood
- smoke fags
- lurk in the dark
- stare silently into the horror of it all
- brood while smoking a fag and holding a baby
- gas themselves
And all this time, barely a word is spoken for five, ten minutes at a time. When there is dialogue it is mumbled and nobody changes their facial expression or gives any visual clue about what they’re mumbling about. In short, I don’t recommend this one as a way of practising aural comprehension!
Muito obrigado Sophia, Ruan, Fabio, Caio e Felipe pelas correcções quando apareceu em iTalki
Comentário
Escrevi um comentário sobre “Do Primeiro Quilómetro à Maratona” de Jéssica Augusto (*=”Revista” ou “comentário”? Qual é melhor neste contexto*?)
Gosto muito este livro. Já sou corredor e estou a aprender português. Então, pensei que um livro sobre o meu desporto seria uma boa selecção.
A Jéssica descreve o progresso duma atleta, desde o sofá, passando pelos primeiros quilómetros até as provas mais longas – incluindo a famosa Maratona (26.2 Milhas). Há muitos conselhos sobre o aquecimento, o treino, a nutrição e a motivação.
Eu recomendo este livro a todos aqueles que querem começar a correr
Thanks very much to Paulo and Fernanda for their help in correcting this text when it first appeared on iTalki.
*= Fernanda offered the opinion that in this context “Commentário” or “apreciação” would be the best word for a book review online. A literary criticism would be a different matter. Revista is a false friend. I listen to a podcast called “revista de Semana” which I thought meant “Review of the Week” which is sort-of-correct but not a review in the sense of a book review. It’s a little more formal and bureaucratic than that, and it’s used as the title of some magazines. For a fuller description, look here.
The review is also now listed on Goodreads
Successful Self Study
I just sat in on a taster webinar for Lindsay Dow’s Successful Self Study course. It was really interesting and her enthusiasm is definitely infectious. It sounds like a course I could have used a couple of years ago when I was struggling to do anything at all. I’m sort-of in the zone now, but I can definitely see the benefit of it for new starters. If you need a motivating force to get you on the right track you might like to take a look (*points* at the link in the first line).
I’ll jot down my answers to the quiz questions here so I don’t forget.
A big tip to boost my language-learning self-confidence: try not to get hung up on one point. I think in my lessons I often spend time making sceptical noises if I don’t understand something, as if the entire nation of Portugal is playing some elaborate practical joke on me. While I haven’t completely ruled out this theory, I can see how that is probably a bit unnerving for the teacher and creates awkward pauses that don’t help anyone.
Three things I can do to achieve this:
- Smile!
- Do some offline study before the lesson to get my mental juices flowing.
- Jot down distracting questions to research later in a grammar book so that I don’t get off the point during valuable conversation time.
Four tips for working around words I don’t know:
I thought I knew a few tricks already but there are always more, so
- Learn the phrase “é uma coisa que…” (“it’s a thing that…”) so you can describe the thing you’re trying to find a word for.
- Mime the thing (assuming the person you’re talking to can see you!) and ask what it’s called
- Say the opposite (e.g., if I don’t remember the word “barato” say “não é caro” instead)
- Read “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” (Hm, I’m not sure about this one)
There were some other hot tips too, both from Lindsay and the other students, but I won’t give you too many spoilers – go and have a look.
New Blog
My Portuguese Teacher, Sophia, has a blog now, so if you’d like to get slightly more authoritative views on the language, you could do a lot worse than to pop over there and have a look.
Luso 