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Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa 🇵🇹
356

I just finished the EdPro PLA course — adding my data points for your consideration.

Some facts up front:

  • I was quoted 700 euros (price from last December) by EdPro. They gave option to pay half to reserve the place and then the other half before class started.
  • I am not in Portugal; I am in the US Central timezone. I opted for the late afternoon session, i.e. 2pm Lisbon time/8am US Central time. My work hours are generally flexible to accommodate this.
  • My objective was to finish it and get the certification that seems to be good for naturalization later. I say “seem” because nothing is for certain WRT to this ARI thing. When I signed up, I had no outsized expectation about the class or how fluent I would be after finishing it.
  • There were approximately 20 students in my class.

Overview

My best guess is that there are three parties that “produced” this course:

  • EdPro markets and recruits the students.
  • Zona Verde provides the technology and operational support for the course. They also seem to be the one coordinating the official registration and certification of the students.
  • A teacher provides the classroom instructions.

Since PLA is a government sponsored program, I am pretty sure there’s some government coordination to get the grants. I am not sure who does that.

Organization

I’ve only taken free courses on Coursera back in the day so those were my only reference points.

This class is very organized.

The entire course comprises a few units that touch on daily work and life, e.g. going to the grocery store, going to the doctors, leisure, looking for work, etc etc etc. Each unit lasts 1 or 2 weeks. As you progress within each unit, you get a few standardized tests which are mostly made up with multiple choices and drag-and-drop questions. You get oral comprehension and reading exercises too. As you progress across units, you get more exposure to vocabulary and grammar.

Each class, you may be called upon to answer questions or speak.

The online platform is akin to a moodle-lite platform. Course material, external links, “games”, and tests are all on the platform.

The online classroom was conducted on a zoom-like platform. In the last 2 weeks of the class, we switched to actual zoom. After class, the recording would be posted on the platform.

Instruction

The teacher was great.

Virtual teaching/learning is a challenging format, much more so for language instruction. However, the teacher was enthusiastic, engaging, and patient. She quickly built rapport with the class.

Difficulty

It’s not possible to provide widely applicable comment as the perception of difficulty is highly subjective to the specific student and it depends on which language they already know (see https://youtu.be/9_RxaeN0FGw?si=IXp-cP5CNmgkp-Gs&t=46.)

Conclusion

Given my objective and my constraints, the course did what it was supposed to do.

Good luck everyone.

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357

Edpro ties up with multiple institutes which have the necessary government accreditation to deliver PLA courses. Zona Verde is one such institute, and I like them. Good e-learning platform, good teachers. The teacher speaks Portuguese during the class, and mirabile dictu, her Microsoft Powerpoint translates the spoken Portuguese to English in real time and displays it as subtitles. This is a gentler form of immersion, especially for those who are not living in Portugal and not listening to Portuguese every day.

There are other institutes which deliver PLA with only Zoom/Webex - no course platform for publishing material, quizzes - which IMO makes for a less effective experience.

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359

Thank you so much for your detailed description! That seems like a fantastic course set up.

So, have you received the certificate? I assume so since you said that it met your objective?

360

Not yet. They are working on getting that for everyone in my class. The class ended a week ago and they said it would be 3 weeks to get it at least.

361

That’s good to know - thanks!

362

Picked up our certificates in person since we happened to be in Lisbon this week. The papers themselves had similar information on them but different formatting and paper types depending on which class one attended. I was slightly taken aback that they were not standardized/identical. The ladies in the office recommended to get a notarized copy made because the Portuguese government is not known for their care in handling original documents.

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363

A lot of people on here seem to be doing the A2 course instead of the CIPLE test. I have a test booked during the next round on May 8th. Anyone here also doing that? How are you preparing?

364

I plan to do the CIPLE test in Nov. How long did it take for you learn the language to feel confident for the test? Is 6 months a reasonable time to grasp it in time for the Nov test as an English speaker?

365

That’s assuming I feel confident about anything :sweat_smile:.
I studied some Spanish and Italian in the past, so I had prior knowledge of the basic structure of Romance languages. I’ve used the site Practice Portuguese a lot, have been using vocab flashcards, and 2-hour weekly group classes with a teacher in my home town. On and off, I’ve been studying Portuguese for about four years. I’m probably at B2 level with reading and listening, but my speaking is still rubbish. Honestly, a big help for me lately has been chatGPT. If you just ask it to create sample exercises for CIPLE, it is really useful.
A2 level is pretty basic, but the CIPLE test is a particular format that can guide you on what is required. You need to have a grasp of specific vocabulary that they consider ‘every day’ Portuguese - greetings/introductions, going to the doctor, asking for directions, booking travel, reading signs, discussing family/vacation etc - so if you focus on those, it makes it less of a mountain to climb. I think you could do it in 6 months with focus, and you only need 55% to pass.

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366

Do you think Practice Portuguese is an accurate reflection of the standard of the A2 exam? The reason I ask is because I’m currently studying an in person A1 course in my home town, I’ve also subscribed to Practice Portuguese. In my in person class we’re learning grammar that doesn’t seem to be touched upon on the Practice Portuguese site at all, and some that PP have classified as A2 level.

367

I’m also planning to give it a shot in November. I studied French at A level at school (25 years ago). Since last September I’ve been studying an in person A1 level course for 3 hours per week. In addition to that we have homework and need to study / revise for exams. Since September I’ve probably averaged an additional 2 hours per week - more in the lead up to tests. The course finishes in June and I’ll then have until November to try to get from A1 to A2 level. I’m not at all confident it’s feasible given I work full time in a demanding job, and have small children who I want to see grow up!

6 months is probably do-able if you have some prior knowledge of a romance language (there are a lot of similarities), have an aptitude for languages, and put in the hours.

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368

Has anyone come across a good set of flash cards for vocabulary?

  • based on a frequency dictionary (the most frequently used 2000 or 5000 words, or any number in between);
  • simple app based on spaced repetition;
  • ideally with European Portuguese audio.

A sample sentence is good but optional. But I hope to avoid mandatory videos / mini lessons.

369

An app called Drops.

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370

I use Clozemaster which meets most of your criteria. You can set the voice to use any voice available on your laptop (mine has EU PT). But I supplement with custom sentences in Anki.

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371

@yzwang PS Practice Portuguese also has cards with spaced repetition. I’m not sure if they have as much context as Clozemaster. But since I already had a lot of flash cards in Clozemaster I didn’t use theirs as well.

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372

I don’t see European Portuguese on Clozemaster?

373

@Beanieskis while reviewing a sentence you can click on settings here:

clozemaster
clozemaster1870×602 40 KB

Then scroll down and change the “System Voice”.

PS this only works on the website, not the app.

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374

I’ve also just downloaded Anki app but am having trouble registering - was that easy for you? Submit button on register page remains greyed out.

375

@Beanieskis easier to sign up in the browser on https://ankiweb.net/

Then reuse those sign in details for the app.

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376

Having take the test I will say what Practice Portuguese does not prepare you for is the auditory portion. They used two podcasts from Portugueses no Mundo for that and of course the podcasts are meant for fluent speakers.

Hopefully you are also practicing writing in your course as that is not something Practice Portuguese prepares you for. But from a grammar perspective I think it’s what you need to know.

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