It seems as though I haven't been doing much today because I haven't been looking up words in a dictionary and then putting them into my anki deck but now that I reflect on it, I have.
At 2:30 I went downstairs and went to the international section on my sky box. There are about 40 channels there, 1 in Chinese, 1 in French and thankfully 1 in Portuguese. The rest where all either Arabic or Hindu, Urdu or another Indian language. I was surprised at this because although there are a lot of people of South Asian origin living in the UK, there are an equal number of people from East Asian origin [especially Chinese] yet there is only 1 tv channel in Chinese. Anyways, I spent around 3 hours listening on and off to the 1 Brazilian tv show for some listening practice. I didn't understand a lot but I think I understood a part of a small 10 minute show to do with Switzerland that the shape of a Toberlone is mimicked after the shape of the mountains in the Alps. It makes sense but it never occurred to me before.
At the same time, I was typing away sending messages to people on Sharedtalk, so that's me done some writing practice today too.
Now, after last night, I was quite disappointed in myself because I completely froze-up when I was confronted with having a real conversation with a native Portuguese speaker but then within the last hour, I was talking to some other Brazilians whose English weren't so good and when I asked 2 of them a question, they asked me to repeat, hesitated and then left the conversation which made me realise that lots of people panic and freeze up when confronted with that type of situation. So I don't feel so disappointed anymore. I then spoke to another young guy who asked me if I spoke Portuguese and I quite easily replied with 'Só falo um pouco mas não falo muito bem' [I only speak a little but not very well]. It's a short sentence but it came out quite fast and I didn't really hesitate. I think that with practice and some more confidence in my abilities then I should manage to start to speak more and more.
So I'm going to find some texts to read on lingq to find some new vocabulary and then I'll have practiced all four skills today. =]
I might also continue some of FSI Chinese.
Update 01:15
I just had a conversation on Sharedtalk where 80-90% of it was in Portuguese and the other person was very aprehensive about speaking English so I was forced to use Portuguese to keep the conversation going. It lasted for around one hour and despite the fact that the two words I said most were 'Sim' and 'desculpe', it's still a start. Aparently I have a strong São Paulo accent which I found strange because the majority of recordings that I listen to are from Rio de Janeiro.
I also trudged through tape 3 of FSI Chinese and the tips in the tape of how to pronouce Chinese consonants which are different from English was extremely helpful but it's so slow and so tedious to work through. The woman explains something clearly and then she explains that thing again and again in slightly different ways. It's unnecessary! But I managed to get through it and although it was so boring, it will help.
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