Week #10

This week, I've been keeping up with watching the Portuguese Semantica videos.  I've learned vocabulary associated primarily with how to check in to a hotel and to arrive to a new city.  I've also continued to work on learning my top 100 Portuguese phrases flash cards.  Both of these sources have proved to be extremely beneficial and have helped me learn a great deal.  This week, after keeping track of all of the things that have worked well, and all that hasn't worked as I planned, and the time commitment associated with all of the resources I found, I went back and edited my 30 day plan.  The finished plan is as follows:

I'm really excited about my finished 30 day challenge!! Based on my experience, it really is beneficial to help someone get a head start learning a language and it's a very small time commitment and would be doable for someone that's very busy and would simply like to dedicate a little time each day to learning a new language.  Although I'm certainly not fluent in Portuguese, I have greatly improved in my understanding of Portuguese when it is spoken and can say quite a few phrases.  

Week #9

After taking a week break from blog posting for the 4th of July holiday, I'm glad to be back to report my progress with learning Portuguese!! For the past two weeks, I have focused solely on watching Portuguese language learning podcasts on iTunes.  I have found this resource to be FANTASTIC.  I absolutely love the porguguese semantica podcasts that I have been listening to and have found them to be extremely beneficial. I am thankful that I started out with Duolingo in order to have a basis of the language, but the podcasts are much more practical in their use.  They provide a video conversation that one would face in the real world, and then it breaks it down and gives new vocabulary.  I watched each video several times until I felt that I had mastered it. These videos taught me how to introduce myself, how to order something at a restaurant, how to ask where something is, and many more very practical and useful things.  I will certainly incorporate this more into the 30 day challenge.  Furthermore, during the past few weeks I have come to the conclusion that it will be beneficial to create two versions of the 30 day challenge- an intensive challenge and an intro challenge for those that don't have a great amount of time each day to spend on it. This will be much more beneficial for those that aren't able to spend as much time as I allotted in the challenge each day.  Continually, I would like to start the challenge more intensive with flashcards and Duolingo, and then transition into movies, podcasts, and such.  This is the method that I have followed and I have found it to be very beneficial.  I can tell that I have made great strides on my understanding of the Portuguese language, though my ability to speak it is still coming along!