Progress 05/06/2010

It's 01:36 am but I just managed to finish unit 12 of FSI. The basic sentence structures of 'ter que' and 'gostar de' were introduced which was nice to practice. There was barely any tedious reviewing in this chapter which has lead me to think that I may actually finish the course although I think I'll take a break in between volumes 1 and 2. Hope to do Teach yourself Portuguese but I'll need to find the audio CD before I can properly delve into it. I have been reading some of the posts on Portuguese by Semantica which is good for some more colloquial phrases such as 'na moda' - in fashion so I might continue going through that.

FSI Portuguese

The FSI Portuguese [Foreign Service Institute Portuguese] course is a free course by the US government made around the 1965's as a language service for soldiers soon going to a country where they would require to use that language. It focuses on heavy repetition as a way of drilling the material into your head. Whilst repetition is a good method, it is possibly the most mind-numbingly boring method on the planet. I am on unit 11 out of 48 and I still have 'os carros' being drilled into my head despite it being introduced 7-9 lessons beforehand. Having the material continuously reinforced for 2-3 lessons is understandable but 7-9 lessons afterwards is a bit extreme. But that's not all, anytime I re-enconter 'os carros' it is not said once, but anywhere from 2-4 times. It's a very unfulfilling course to work through but I must admit that I have saw improvements through it, in particular with my listening skills. The problem is that it is becoming very hard to motivate myself to study Portuguese as it is the only course I can properly follow. There are barely any affordable courses out there for a broke student who get £10 per week to spend leisurely. I know that as boring as it is, it will allow me to have a good base to build upon but the question is can I really finish it if I'm having difficulties motivating myself less than 25% in?

04/06/2010 - Progress

Gotten through unit 2 of 'Portuguese in 3 months'. Learnt that the present continuous tense can be created through estar + a + infinitive but I think this is more of a European Portuguese feature than Brazilian Portuguese which I'm mainly focusing on. Still it's useful to know these sorts of things. Intended to do unit 11 of FSI but couldn't motivate myself to do so.
Was going to move on and do some Japanese. Even if I want to focus on just one language I shouldn't completely neglect all others. If I could add at least 5 new words in the other languages I', learning into anki per day then that'll suffice. But I'm going to keep on going with Portuguese for the time being.

Update 17:41
Still struggling my way through unit 11 of FSI. Would happily abandon it for another course but Portuguese materials are hard to come across. Did do unit 3 of Teach Yourself Portuguese but unfortunately a lot of the lessons are audio based and I don't have the audio but I'll still try to make the most of it.

Progress chart.

Before, I was using the amount of flashcards I had mastered on lingq [where you must correctly review a flashcard 4 times before it is considered known] but now that lingq has impose it's 100 limit flashcard system, I can no longer use it unless I upgrade. But I recently discovered a more inconvient but manageable way to track my known words. I found out that anki tracks how many times you have correctly recalled a word. Once I have gotten 4/4, I will consider that word mastered, will change the tag on the card to 'mastered' and will keep track of how many words I have mastered. I have upped my target to 600 items but this will include both words and sentences. Now off to review some more on anki and watch the bar charts in the header grow bigger ☺.

03/06/2010 - Progress

Completed Lesson one/Primeira lição of Hugo's Portuguese in three months. Have read it in the past but never took time to do exercises. Also did unit 1 and unit 2 of Manuela Cook's Teach Yourself Portuguese. Think I'll need to go over unit 2 again about directions, since I always find learning about directions boring and hence might not take it in properly.

Update 4-5ish
Just finished FSI Portugese unit 8. The exercises are getting a little tedious but I'll try to persist in getting through all 48 units. Might look for some Portuguese courses on Smart.fm for a change to keep up my interest.

Update 21:00
Managed to get through FSI Portuguese units 9 and 10 though felt as though I really had to force myself at times. They're getting very tedicious and I felt sick of doing them but I know I'll benefit from them so I'm going to keep on going. Learnt material that was slightly more advanced: Queremos evitar o tráfego. Found some expressions off livemocha to use aswell in a flashcard set which I might use to write sentences in my lang-8 journal but probably not tonight.

02/06/2010 - Progress [if you can call it that]

Only got round to doing unit 7 of FSI Portuguese. Almost a whole day wasted. I now do have the phrase 'se você quiser' now drilled into my head. Pretendo escrever a couple of words using that phrase in my journal on lang-8 as well as sentences using the word só - only or not....until. Até amanhã.

Update 22:50
I love submitting exercises for Portuguese on livemocha. Submit an exercise and within 15 minutes there are 20 comments on your faults and how to improve your pronunciation. Unlike French, where you'll be luck to get any comments at all. Just completed the speaking exercise on unit 5 of Portuguese 101, which leaves me 73% complete. I need to practice the Portuguese pronunciation of the letter 'l' especially when it comes as 'lh' but hopefully with FSI and listening to tv in Portuguese my pronunciation will further improve.

6 years of language.

Currently, I'm on ebay looking for AS French language books. I figure AS level to be the equivalent of the Scottish Higher level of which I have a Grade B but AS level goes into a bit more detail than higher. I'm really disappointed with how SQA [Scottish Qualifications Authority] deals with teaching foreign languages. We start learning a foreign language in primary 6, when student are around 9-10 years old. In my school it was compulsary to learn a language at Standard Grade [GCSE]. After 6 years of studying French at school, I have friends who would not have a clue how to order in a French cafe or how to construct a sentence such as 'I have long hair' or answer 'Oú habites tu?'. Yet in other countries there are children who are at an advanced level after 6 years of studying at school. I'll admit that I never studied for my Higher French. I had a native French teacher during Standard Grade level who taught us verb tenses such as the future tense and the conditional tense which you are not supposed to learn until Higher level. I became very unmotivated to learn French after going into my first higher French lesson and learning basic grammar such as 'de + le = du'. An education system which takes 6 years to teach such a basic grammar rule is clearly one in need of reform.