Everything Ive seen so far requires presence in PT (and valid residency?) to take theā¦onlineā¦class. Maybe our mandatory time in PT will be spent taking a zoom class locally-remotely.
I still want to know where all the oligarchs and other billionaires bought their language certificates. Ive never seen Jeff Bezos slingin Portuguese!
Several times in the last year, Iāve attempt to find a PLA A1 + A2 course. My goals and preferences:
Every time I start with the governmentās PLA page.
My first stop is the Qualifica page, which lists 55 schools in the extended Lisbon area. Around half of those listings include links to a web site. Many of those web sites are non-responsive, broken, or abandoned, with only years-old content. A careful search of the site yields some mention of PLA courses on maybe half of the functioning sites. They never mention course schedules and rarely mention fees. Enrollment procedures are not clear. A few sites feature a form to sign up for the course, with no indication about when the course might be offered, how long it will run, what times of day are available, and how much it will cost.
Another link on the government page leads to another list of schools. This experience is the same as the Qualifica experience, except that I have to search for the web sites rather than clicking a link. Many sites donāt mention PLA at all. No sites list course schedules. Few list fees. A few have Google forms links for enrollment but dates, hours, durations, costs are not in scope for the forms.
The design of the IEFPonline site is more useful, if still not ideal. Searching for āPortuguĆŖs LĆngua de Acolhimentoā and restricting the search to the Lisbon area, I find 15 A1 + A2 courses coming up. The start date is listed. The duration or end date is not. All of the locations are inconvenient for a Lisbon-bound transit user. I note that the number of courses listed on this site has decreased dramatically since last year.
The Education and Training Courses Portal is the shining star, providing key details like start and end date for each course offering. Searching again for āPortuguĆŖs LĆngua de Acolhimentoā, I find a few possible matches. None overlap with my spring travel plans and it seems like they donāt list courses more than 2 or 3 months in advance, so itās too early to assess potential matches for my fall/winter trip. If I donāt identify any better option, Iāll just keep an eye on this site and try to grab a spot if a course is scheduled that overlaps with one of my planned trips.
AssociaĆ§Ć£o EdPro seems to be a for-profit venture that offers courses for an unspecified, sliding-scale ānominalā fee. Word of mouth suggests that the fee is in the neighborhood of $1000 for a GV holder. Course schedules are not listed. I presume that they are willing to work with you to slot you in to a course that meets your scheduling needs.
Based on an earlier NG post, I also investigated some university that offers PLA A1+A2 courses even more expensive than the EdPro courses. I forgot the details and donāt care to hunt them down again.
Before I visited North Africa, I found that it was all but impossible to remotely book a camel ride in the Sahara. Once I got there, it was dead simple: I paid cash to the hotel clerk and someone picked me up the next morning.
Now, I solicit the wisdom of the community. Is it easy to book a free PLA course in Lisbon at a neighborhood school? Is the secret that you have to just call them on the phone or stop by their office? For those of you who enrolled and completed a PLA course, how did you find a course and enroll? How much competition is there for choice calendar slots, and how far in advance do you need to engage to secure a spot?
If you desire a truly personalized, concierge learning environment (which it appears that you do not) and you donāt care about money (which it appears that you do), I could suggest you investigate CIPLEmaster. Maybe someone else would benefit from such an experience.
It seems like a wonderful option taking into account only the convenience.
That sounds like a good option for folks who want to try their luck with the CIPLE. I plan to bypass that uncertainty by taking the 150 hour government-approved course. 
That course appears to be a proper PLA and not require CIPLE while also not requiring you to be inside Portugal during the course. Very temptingā¦
Ahh, you are correct. I wonder why their marketing tagline plays up the red herring, āsuccessfully pass the CIPLE exam in just a few monthsā.
Nonetheless, too rich for my blood!
Hey!
You need concierge to manage you special free courses customized for you.
keep a concierge managing the camel/courses booking, amd for free
Go with CIPLE you will end up with 2-3k (minimum) to be able passing your CIPLE on 2 months ā¦
Not true for EDPRO it s not 1k fee! prices are not related to your visa type!
If you need your A2, it s a demanding and challenging project. Engaging with such a mindset will never help you reach you GV ultimate goal.
Maybe a same experience than the one you got with camel booking would help you !
Good luck! Arrogance will not help at all
Why is so fuss about the courses which could be done only in Portugal? Take whatever courses you want or even individual teacher and sit for CIPLE exam which you could do in many countries.
I have studied language outside Portugal and passed the exam without any problem. My spouse had lower level of language, but also passed. After passing the language we moved to Portugal and still had some difficulties to speak on the streets. Here I am trying to emphasize that exam level is not very high.
I think the level may be raised soon, like in all other European countries, to B1. Less probable but also could be a normal solution if Portugal closes that hole to give certificate via courses and equalize everything, because there are many testimonies that courses are easier than CIPLE exam. I am sure there are courses also that give certificates in a corrrupted way or in short just sell them.
However, by default the option is CIPLE exam and it could be done by anybody in many countries.
Oligarchs like Jeff Bezos do not seek portuguese citizenship))
Why the fuss? The audio portion of the CIPLE exam sounds miserable and I donāt want to suffer through it. I already test beyond A2 but I would rather take the in-person class and receive my completion certificate. The class may offer opportunities to further develop my spoken language skills.
Iām glad that your strategy works for you. I plan to carry on with my own strategy.
My personal strategy is to avoid corrupt language certificates, so if anyone knows where those are sold, please let me know so I can stay far away.
The PLA centers that offer A1+A2 courses also offer B1+B2 courses that take exactly the same 150 hours. So if you already test beyond A2 but want to do a PLA course, you might as well do the B1+B2 course, since it will insure you against the citizenship requirement increasing to B1 or B2 
No retroactivity for laws if you apply before any āsupposedā change of a required proficiency level (actually A2)
Moreover there is no any heard plan to increase required level of language proficiencyā¦!
For what itās worth, itās quite likely you could score a zero on the audio portion and still pass the exam .
True. People Iāve heard from passed, despite the spitefully indecipherable audio comprehension section. I just donāt want the stress; Iāve had enough discretionary stress for this lifetime. And I welcome the opportunity to practice my language skills with other learners.
Question about the online EDPRO course. But firstā¦
I recently passed the CIPLE exam, and by the way, itās not true that you can fail the listening exam and still pass; you must score 55% or above in each of the four sections. I took it in October 2023 in Lisbon. The listening part was terrible (the room moderator apologized afterward for how difficult it was compared to previous years) and I made many wild guesses, but I still passed. The easier part was to associate 15 short sentences to different situations or professions. That alone is worth around 40%, so I didnāt need to get a lot correct in the other questions. The other sectionsāreading, writing, and speaking, I found to be on the easy side.
But my question is for my wife, who is starting at beginner level with Portuguese, and is intimidated about the exam, despite my reassurances. She wants a course with the certificate at the end. The PLA courses are already booked up long in advance where we live.
The EDPRO course looks very temptingāboth because she likes the idea of a daily intensive course for genuine learning, done online at home, and for the certificate at the end which makes the exam unnecessary.
But the worry of course is whether their certificate is genuinely valid for nationality applications. Has anyone here actually done this course and had their certificates acceptedāthat is, the certificate passed scrutiny at stage 4 of the nationality process?
Iām also concerned that they ask for copies of personal identity documents and oneās NISS number before you actually register and pay for the course. Although my wife has her NISS, Iāve never heard of anyone needing this number other than a few government departments. These things also set alarm bells ringing.
I canāt find any straight answers or genuine testimonies about EDPRO. On some Facebook groups there are 2 or 3 people praising EDPRO to the moon, while their scanty profiles lead me to believe that theyāve been planted there to talk up this for-profit course. I have yet to find one person (whose identity I trust) who can verify that they received the certificate and that it passed the approval process. If youāve done this, can you please comment here?
I would like to know the same. Imagine sitting 150 hours in a class that doesnt count toward your citizenship application!
All online courses are monitored by the official body and the student MUST follow the policies ( 90% attendance, interaction, homeworkā¦)
Thanks for the reassurance. What you say leaves the impression that there are online courses available, which one can enroll in without needing an aggregator like EDPRO. Do you have any idea how to, first, find them, and enroll with them directly? Many hours of searching has not led me to any.
I learned the following directly from EDPRO:
There are little tests/15 minute exercises/homework that you must do to show your knowledge and involvement with the material throughout the course. These tests can be done overnight on the EdTech platform they use and donāt seem to be āliveā. These tests are up to the teacher of the individual course you are in. And you must attend 90% of the classes and you must participate in class to pass (like @Kingo spoke about). Iām curious about the meaning of the words āhomeworkā vs. ātestsā and would love to hear from someone that has done these classes themselves.
Also, I was told you only need the resident permit and NIF. I didnāt know what a NISS was and was told it wasnāt required.
Don t know
There are many sessions of intensive online 8 weeks courses and you can follow courses from abroad.
Check with them