I need tips on revision and remembering Portuguese

Matt Philip

Posts: 2

Hi, I'm currently learning Portuguese from my friend who is natively Brasilian. It seems to be going pretty well however I've never been too good with revision so I was wondering if you have any tips on revising when learning another language, e.g. consistency, how long should I revise for at a time, any certain methods that are effective? I've never learnt another language before so this is fairly new to me, Thanks :D

Chris Thompson
Tartu, EE

Native language:
English (United Kingdom)

Posts: 29

Hi Matt,

The best strategy is probably to try to spend a little time on it every day, or at least a few times a week.

When learning new words or phrases, repetition is important as this helps new words or phrases go into your long-term memory. So try to cover the same material a few times. For example, if you learn a list of words one day, test yourself with the same list of words a few days later to see how many you can remember.

One helpful thing you can do is to keep a small notebook and write down any new words or phrases you learn in that. Then when you have 5 minutes spare, whilst you're waiting for a bus or whatever, you can read through it and make use of what otherwise would be dead time. The more regularly you see the words, the more likely you are to be able to remember them.

As regards how long you should revise at a time, it really depends on how much time you've got available, how quickly you want to learn the language, and how long you can concentrate for. Generally speaking the more time you spend learning a language, the faster you'll be able to speak it. That said, there's not much benefit in revising beyond the point when you can concentrate properly.

If you're a casual language learner trying to pick up a new language in your free time, I'd suggest that short learning sessions of say 30 minutes each a few times a week is probably most effective.

There are also some ways you can vary how you learn to make it more interesting. For example, you could find a Portuguese or Brazilian radio station on the internet and listen to that. Even if you can't understand much at first, just listening to the sound of people speaking in Portuguese will help your pronunciation. You could also try watching films in Portuguese with English subtitles, or looking at some Portuguese websites and looking up words you don't know.

Good luck! If you have any other questions, let me know.

Chris

Matt Philip

Posts: 2

Thanks a lot, I have to catch a 10 minute train everyday so I'll use this for revision, I've bought some Portuguese movies as well. and found some radio stations too. Even though I can't understand much of the radio it increases my confidence with pronunciation. Thanks again for the help

Chris Thompson
Tartu, EE

Native language:
English (United Kingdom)

Posts: 29

No problem! Glad to be of assistance.

If you have any more questions at any stage, feel free to ask them in the forums by starting a new topic.

Anna Owczarek

Native language:
Polish

Posts: 6

Hi Chris! Do you want to help me with ma English? we can talk to on Skype:)