Week 4 Reflection
At this point, we are really starting to settle into a routine. The format and schedule that we laid out in the beginning is panning out perfectly and I am very happy with the way things are going. My goals of improving in Speaking and Listening are really developing, but perhaps I could do more in terms of Writing and Reading. While I practice it weekly for the same amount of time that we have our discussions, I feel like it is maybe less intensive and there is less immediate pressure on me while doing it so I do not feel the improvement as much. I do not mean that pressure and situations that are typically more higher stress situations for language learners are necessary or the only way to really learn a language, but in my experience they certainly help. For example, direct language immersion in the region where the target language is spoken is generally one of the fastest ways to learn a language for a variety of reasons, one of them being surrounded by it and regularly finding oneself in more high-pressure situations than a classroom in order to order food and survive there.
We have finalized our syllabus and are starting in on the first chapters of the book. One of the concepts that I struggled with and that we needed to spend the most time on was the difference between the verbs ser, estar and ficar. Ser and estar exist in Spanish and thankfully the difference between them is the same in Portuguese as it is in Spanish: ser is used for more permanent, unchangeable, characteristic concepts and estar is used for changeable states and aspects. However, ficar was an entirely new word and concept as there is not really an equivalent in English or Spanish. It was similar to estar but with very nuanced differences, in my opinion. It can be used to describe locations, or sometime temporary states usually in the past tense. For example, you could say :the restaurant é [ser] on Main Street”, “Jorge está [estar] sitting in the restaurant”, and “Jorge ficava [ficar] in the restaurant a long time before the waiter noticed him”. So here ficar has a more similar meaning to “stay” than “was/be” (even though they would both work), but you could also say “she vai ficar mad that you canceled the show”, meaning she will get so mad or be so mad, which is closer to “be” than “stay” even though it almost has the connotation of both.
I tripped up on those in a lot of exercised that we did and I felt like it changed meanings and rules every time, but eventually I got a good enough grasp of it to get the general concept, use it a couple times in our conversation the following week, and leave the larger grasping of the concept of it in every situation that exists for something that will come with practice and better overall knowledge of the language.
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