Journal 3:
Recap: I’m studying Portuguese from the São Paulo region of Brazil. I’m studying vocabulary, practicing listening comprehension, grammar, reading, and conversation. I study vocabulary through mnemonic devices deliberate personal use, and television. Deliberate personal use means that I learn about a new word and then make a point of trying to use it in conversation. Television is what it sounsd like; if there’s a funny or impactful scene for one of my favorite shows, I try and watch it in Portuguese and associate the word with the moment.
For example in Hazbin Hotel, there’s a scene where one character calls the other one ‘inauthentic’ or ‘fake.’ The character says the word ‘fingir’ and mentally I’ve been able to save that picture and used it to learn an important verb. For listening comprehension, I talk to my girlfriend and language partner, and listen to Portuguese music. To be honest, grammar has not been a major priority and may be becoming one of the victims of an increasingly intense academic workload, but on a good week I practice Portuguese grammar through my flashcards from Portuguese 390.
Reading has remained the same throughout the semester: I read about Brasilia as part of Dr. Abreu’s Building Brasilia CLAC. For conversation, I meet with my language partner for two hours each week and talk with my girlfriend who herself is a native speaker.
My resources remain largely the same: Flashcards, Reddit, Portuguese Memory Book, Conjuguemos, Spotify, Google translate (for song lyrics), DeepL, Cambridge Dictionary’s similar words feature, ChatGPT (for etymology). A new addition is Netflix and Amazon Prime where I watch Baki and Hazbin Hotel in Portuguese.
My original goals were to read Pride and Prejudice and learn Portuguese tax vocabulary, those evolved to a desire for communicative flow and ease and that largely remains my goal now. Only thing I would add now is a desire to be able listen to my girlfriend and not force her to be an obliging language partner all the time. I hope to get to the level of Portuguese where I can hear about someone’s day at a regular conversational pace with high understanding. To be quite candid, I feel bad that she an either tell me about her day at an unnaturally slow pace or in a foreign tongue.
I think I’m doing pretty well with reciprocal goals. Outside of helping my language partners and girlfriend improve their English, my class at Sacred Heart has several Portuguese speakers. Showing them that while they are learning English, I'm invested in learning their language has had a profound impact on their engagement. Lots of cultural connections; through my classes as well as through some Brazilian music and Música, a Brazilian movie I watched this month about Newark’s Brazilian population.
Strategies remain the same as always - trying to make the experience fun and keeping personal engagement with the language high. Motivation is doing alright, but things are getting a little more serious academically which is reducing motivation simply because there’s only so many hours in the day.
No huge new learning ideas. I would like to chat with my girlfriend’s family at some point as they only speak Portuguese. I realize I have seldom spoken to a Portuguese speaker with whom I couldn’t fall back on using English if I struggled. With them that won’t be possible and I think that might help me feel more confident as a speaker that I can converse not just with native speakers who know English, but with native speakers who don’t as well.
Overall things are progressing adequately. When I’m bored I enjoy looking at kwai.com and learning more about Brazilian culture (specifically in places where it differs significantly from English) has been a lot of fun!
Recap: I’m studying Portuguese from the São Paulo region of Brazil. I’m studying vocabulary, practicing listening comprehension, grammar, reading, and conversation. I study vocabulary through mnemonic devices deliberate personal use, and television. Deliberate personal use means that I learn about a new word and then make a point of trying to use it in conversation. Television is what it sounsd like; if there’s a funny or impactful scene for one of my favorite shows, I try and watch it in Portuguese and associate the word with the moment.
For example in Hazbin Hotel, there’s a scene where one character calls the other one ‘inauthentic’ or ‘fake.’ The character says the word ‘fingir’ and mentally I’ve been able to save that picture and used it to learn an important verb. For listening comprehension, I talk to my girlfriend and language partner, and listen to Portuguese music. To be honest, grammar has not been a major priority and may be becoming one of the victims of an increasingly intense academic workload, but on a good week I practice Portuguese grammar through my flashcards from Portuguese 390.
Reading has remained the same throughout the semester: I read about Brasilia as part of Dr. Abreu’s Building Brasilia CLAC. For conversation, I meet with my language partner for two hours each week and talk with my girlfriend who herself is a native speaker.
My resources remain largely the same: Flashcards, Reddit, Portuguese Memory Book, Conjuguemos, Spotify, Google translate (for song lyrics), DeepL, Cambridge Dictionary’s similar words feature, ChatGPT (for etymology). A new addition is Netflix and Amazon Prime where I watch Baki and Hazbin Hotel in Portuguese.
My original goals were to read Pride and Prejudice and learn Portuguese tax vocabulary, those evolved to a desire for communicative flow and ease and that largely remains my goal now. Only thing I would add now is a desire to be able listen to my girlfriend and not force her to be an obliging language partner all the time. I hope to get to the level of Portuguese where I can hear about someone’s day at a regular conversational pace with high understanding. To be quite candid, I feel bad that she an either tell me about her day at an unnaturally slow pace or in a foreign tongue.
I think I’m doing pretty well with reciprocal goals. Outside of helping my language partners and girlfriend improve their English, my class at Sacred Heart has several Portuguese speakers. Showing them that while they are learning English, I'm invested in learning their language has had a profound impact on their engagement. Lots of cultural connections; through my classes as well as through some Brazilian music and Música, a Brazilian movie I watched this month about Newark’s Brazilian population.
Strategies remain the same as always - trying to make the experience fun and keeping personal engagement with the language high. Motivation is doing alright, but things are getting a little more serious academically which is reducing motivation simply because there’s only so many hours in the day.
No huge new learning ideas. I would like to chat with my girlfriend’s family at some point as they only speak Portuguese. I realize I have seldom spoken to a Portuguese speaker with whom I couldn’t fall back on using English if I struggled. With them that won’t be possible and I think that might help me feel more confident as a speaker that I can converse not just with native speakers who know English, but with native speakers who don’t as well.
Overall things are progressing adequately. When I’m bored I enjoy looking at kwai.com and learning more about Brazilian culture (specifically in places where it differs significantly from English) has been a lot of fun!
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