During the past two weeks, I have felt a large growth in my learning of the Portuguese language. Two Fridays ago, I met with Dixon, and I read him a letter I wrote for my mom’s birthday. He helped me to correct it, and after, he gave me an excerpt of a book written by a journalist. Dixon had read this passage with his Portuguese for Spanish Speakers class, and he had me read it with him. The first half of the passage, I read it slowly and after every couple of sentences, I would try and express what I had gathered from those sentences. I noticed that when reading Portuguese, I tend to speak slower, because I want to pronounce the words correctly with the correct accent. I remember when first beginning the SDLC 105 and 110 courses, I mentioned that I tend to be a perfectionist with languages, and I struggle with just ‘going for it.’ When I was learning Spanish, I tended to rehearse what I wanted to say in order for it to be 100% correct. One of my professors reached out to me to tell me to just say whatever came to mind, because in order to learn the language, you will make mistakes, but that it okay, because it is more natural, and over time I will be able to instinctively use the correct grammar.
Translating this advice to learning Portuguese, when reading Portuguese aloud, I like to pronounce things correctly, however, I am not as concerned, because talking to Gabi and Dixon each week will help me to pronounce words correctly. When reading the passage with Dixon, he had me speed-read the second half of the passage just to gain good pace in reading. I had not thought of reading this way, so I am glad he did, because it felt good to be able to read quickly without stopping. In terms of being able to comprehend, I found that I was able to understand the general gist of the passage, because the structure of the Portuguese sentences resembles that of Spanish. Many words and verbs also are similar, so even if I may not know the word for something in Portuguese, many times, it is usually similar to a word in Portuguese. Now, I do not mean to generalize that the Portuguese language is the same as Spanish, however it does help me to understand the context. In the real world, conversationally, this may not help as much, because I will have to be able to respond. I may be able to get a basic point across, but the words may be completely butchered. I believe with continued practice with Gabi and Dixon, I can become more confident in speaking. The past meeting with Dixon, we just talked the whole time in Portuguese, and while it was a very basic conversation without many complex sentences, the conversation still boosted my confidence.
Gabi and I have been trying to continue to read together, and this past meeting, we listened to Chella, her friend from home. She sings in both Portuguese and English, and we listened to her Portuguese songs, and Gabi had me say what I thought Chella sang. For the most part, I was able to catch a few words. I found that the parts of the sentence structure tripped me up. For example the articles and prepositions tend to combine, and they create small words like “na” and “no.” With more exposure to the hearing the language, I will be able to recognize these words and their meanings.
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