This past week I met with Gabi for the first time. We established what we would make the course look like. Essentially, I will work on grammar and vocabulary and reading on my own, and go over topics I have confusion with, with Gabi. This past week specifically, we went over the alphabet and the subtle accent differences. We also talked about some culture elements like food and music. She loves tapioca and päo um queijo. The tapioca can be made into a wrap sort of thing to be filled with either sweet or savory flavors. The päo um queijo are little dough balls filled with cheese. She gave me a couple of songs to listen to over the week that were slow enough to be able to recognize words. The main focus of our meeting was working on my accent. Since, the Portuguese language emphasizes and loses certain sounds, it is taking me a bit to be able to hear the differences between the accents over the e’s and a’s. I think in time, it will sounds more natural and become more fluid as I talk to Gabi and Dixon more. Gabi and I also went over basic greetings and phrases like “How do you say _____?” She is very easy to work with and very patient. I mentioned that I wanted to become a dentist, so I would like to learn some dental vocabulary, and she said her mom is actually a dentist, so she would be able to send the words she uses on a daily basis. I can practice and remember these words for the future.
When I visited Dixon this past week, we talked about mainly the pronunciation of words and dipthongs and tripthongs. We went over the phonetics of the language even more and went into a little bit of conjugating. We went over querer, tener, estar, and ser. He had me spell words and simple sentences as he said them aloud in order to test my hearing and familiarity with how the letters make different sounds in comparison to Spanish and English. He also mentioned that he is switching up his Portuguese course that he teaches due to the undelivered books. He is adding me to the drill group on blackboard as well in order to give me further work. He is starting to upload listening exercises, so I should be able to listen to those as well.
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