Learning Portuguese!

Olá! Boa noite. Meu nome é Adrienne. Eu tenho 23 anos. Eu sou de dos Estados Unidos.

As a beginning Portuguese speaker, learning these few sentences feels like a success. Our group has the privilege to work with Dr.Cecília Carvalho, a professor of Portuguese as a second language at PUC Rio. In two, one-hour lessons, Dr. Carvalho has taught us numbers, salutations, introductions, the alphabet, nationalities, three verbs and short sentences. Needless to say, we are on the path to becoming true Cariocas.

This past semester at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln,the Teaching, Learning, Teacher Education department gave a demonstration of the TPRS (teaching reading through proficiency and story telling) foreign language teaching method. This method, involving high levels of language input as well as combination of physical gestures and storytelling is commonly used for beginning English as a second language students. Dr. Carvalho uses this method with us and, as I alluded to earlier, it is very, very effective.

Learning Portuguese has been a great experience. After today's lesson, I feel much more comfortable attempting to communicate with the locals in their language. Since two-thirds of us are Spanish speakers, the Portuguese lessons have been even more interesting, as we are able to compare the similarities and differences between the two romance languages.

It is only with slight difficulties that Spanish speakers can read Portuguese. Portuguese and Spanish share a large number of words that are either spelled identically, or very similarly. Due to the main difference between the two languages being pronunciation, the Spanish speakers in our group have been able to navigate directions and instructions with relative ease, and this is extremely useful!

In the next two weeks, we have three more Portuguese as a second language classes at PUC Rio. By combining the language classes with this wonderful immersion experience, I have no doubt that upon our arrival back in Omaha, our language skills will be very impressive.

Obrigado por ler ese blog!