Progress 06/06/2010

Did two speaking exercises on livemocha. Found out that I really need to practice the word 'eu' and I think today was the first time that a native speaker has ever told me to speak their language slower. Did the speaking exercise on careers and on time. Learnt some good time phrases off semantica :

às vezes - once in a while
De vez em quando - once in a while
De vez - for good; forever
Para sempre - forever
Ao longo do tempo - over time
Outra vez - again
Todos os dias - everyday
O dia todo - all day long
O tempo da minha vida - the time of my life
em vez de = em lugar de - in the place of; instead of

I think I'll make up a lot of sentence with these words for practice.

Also completed unit 13 of FSI Portuguese. Learnt that a lot of question word are followed by 'é que'. For example:
Onde é que... Where do[es]
Por que é que... Why do[es]
Quando é que... When do[es]
O que é que... What do[es]

Wrote down a lot of questions with these words and put them into anki. Also had some practice with the verb 'achar' and the phrase 'parece que' as well as using 'perto de' and 'longe de'. FSI is getting back into my good books. The level of study in FSI is catching up to my current level of Portuguese, plus there isn't so much of the tedious repetition as before so it's become much more enjoyable within the last 2 lessons.

Update 19:50
I was really tempted to move onto Spanish after watch a video on youtube about the passive voice in Spanish and realised how much easier it would be to learn Spanish but I might be spending the next 4 years learning Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to study Spanish and Portuguese at the same time due to their large similarities so I'm going to continue with Portuguese. Acabo de estudar como usar o verbo 'acabar de' . I've just studied how to use the verb 'acabar de' [although I'm not sure if the second half of that sentence was right]. I also just realised how valuable a resource google books is, for a student how has next to no money. I would still much prefer to buy a book but at least I can use google books to learn a bit of what I otherwise might not be able to.