Second. ChatGPT and the like are the âfake newsâ on steroids.
I suspect this may be intentional.
Your response was so good that I have copied and pasted into my âPortugueseâ file. Thanks a lot! Margaret
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I heard that the listening was particularly hard, and for this reason I have friends who have opted to do a B1 course with certificate instead. We are all retired people, and our hearing isnât as acute as it used to be, so âstreet Portugueseâ with all the background noise can be quite a challenge.
Good luck everyone.
Margaret
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Margaret - can you elaborate? Do you mean A2 is required, while B1 is more advanced but doesnât require a listening test?
Margaret has asked me to post her reply (she has a technical glitch):
âMy brother-in-law has chosen this route and it seems to be acceptable based on my somewhat basic googling of the issue. Iâm guessing that the main language schools in Portuguese cities would know best regarding this. However, Iâm no expert on this.â
Two things about the listening. First, sign up as soon as your test date opens so you get the lowest possible number for that test date. That means you will be in the front of the room near the speaker they set up for this. And I mean as soon asâset your alarm and at 12:00 am GMT start refreshing your browser.
Second, and this is kind of an odd thing, the background noise can be helpful. If you are hearing street noise, for example, it is more likely the setting is a taxi or bus rather than a flower shop. If you hear silverware clacking, it is more likely you are in a restaurant.
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I took the A2 test yesterday. It was challenging for sure, especially the listening.
The first part is written where you have some short paragraphs to read and choose the answer that is true about what you have read. These were about 25 questions. Then you had a short text (up to 35 words) and a longer text (up to 85 words) to write. The first was re-establishing contact with a school friend and writing an email about yourself. The second was talking about renovations to your house. What was done? Were you happy? My tutor gave me a great piece of advice to start with the texts and then go to the multiple choice. I think that was the way to do it so you donât run out of time. I took pretty much the entire 75 minutes doing this portion.
Second part is the dreaded audio. They used three interviews from the podcast âPortuguese no Mundo.â I had practiced listening to these beforehand but really they are tough if you arenât advanced. Then there was a woman leaving telephone messages for a friend. You are to answer questions about what happened in these audios. The last bit was interesting. They played 11 different audios, some long, some just a sentence, and you were supposed to match with a response to the inquiry or statement that would make the most sense (ie, âIâm in a hurry as I am late to catch my flightâ Answer: I will try my best but cannot promise you will be on time.
Lastly was the speaking part. You are paired with another test taker and each is asked different questions about themselves (family, work, etc). Next you are given a photo and asked to talk about the photo for TWO MINUTES! In addition to what is happening in the photo, you can talk about: do they seem happy? Are they family or friends? What are they wearing/eating/whateverâŠLastly you and your partner are given several scenarios (an activity to do or a meal to have someplace) and youâre to agree on which activity you want to do and then plan it and talk about it. That lasts six minutes.
What I did not realize is that there are only 2 examiners for the oral portion so for the ~30 test takers it was going to be a few hours to complete. Apparently you can be asked to come back like at 5 p.m. for that portion. Luckily, as last name starts with A, I was in the first group.
It also appeared that we were more or less seated in alphabetical order (not according to when you signed up for test). All the test takers on my right and left were âAsâ The young man to my right was my speaking partner so check with the person to your right and left if they have a ticket at the same time/same room. Then you have at least an hour or so to talk to them, get to know them, see their level of speaking, etc. That was very helpful.
Fingers crossed!
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Very interesting that the seating/ordering was alphabetic rather than your number. Mine was different.
Also, I forgot about the oral taking most of the day. We were #1 and #2, so that wasnât a factor. But a great idea about identifying who your possible partner will be and linking up before hand!!
Thatâs really interesting. Iâve copied and pasted into my âImportant Notesâ page in my âPortugueseâ folder!
Thank you
Margaret
Hi - thx for the info. What is the link for the Portuguese no Mundo? What I found are 20+ min interviews and a zillion of them!
You can access through RTP app or searching for Portugueses no Mundo on your podcast app.
Also one additional point about the listening portion. Someone commented about being close to the speaker. I was the closest person during my test, and the proctors stood at the desk right next to me shuffling and collating all the papers from the written portion and it was super-distracting as you can imagine and I wished I had been further away.
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Please let me know if there are any Portuguese TV series or shows with English subtitles available online.
RTP has shows but with subtitles in Portuguese.
Waoooo, congratulations though you arenât done. Nothing good comes easy. Though of us who speak a bit French language will have some urge
On Netflix Iâve watched Gloria, Turn of Tides (the English title- O Rabo de Peixe in PT) and Until Life Do Us Part. All EU Portuguese with subtitles. Can also recommend an RTP app called Estudo em Casa. It was for home education during pandemic, classes at all levels and while no subtitles, the teachers use a lot of visuals which help you understand what they are talking about and of course the lower the grade, the easier to comprehend.
Following up on my experience with Langotalk (which is GPT-based), I tried using regular ChatGPT Plus (with the GPT-4 model) instead. It works much, much better for European Portuguese.
If you want to give it a try, just start out with a prompt like this:
Hi there, you are a European Portuguese language tutor named Sara who comes from Lisbon, Portugal. You are very helpful and will explain what I did wrong and how to fix it whenever I make a mistake in my written Portuguese. For the rest of the conversation we will only speak in European Portuguese.
It mostly followed my instructions, although at some point I needed to remind it (her?) to keep correcting my Portuguese, and I also had to ask it to use informal Portuguese to avoid being addressed with vocĂȘ instead of tu, etc.
Iâd recommend using it in conjunction with the DeepL desktop app and its shortcut (cmd + c + c on Mac) to quickly translate things youâre unsure about or get help with pronunciation.
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How do you deal with writing all the various accents and such we donât have on the us English keyboard?
FWIW - there are the numeric keypad alt-codes. Example - Left-Alt+0233 gives you Ă©. Just gotta look them up - https://altcodeunicode.com/ - however, this only works (AFAIK) with a numeric keypad. If you have an LT w/o, no-workiework.
However, I got tired of that and simply installed the EU-PT language on my windows & Linux machines. If you forget the layout, you can (windows) use cmd-OSK (on-screen keyboard). Simple mouse click to select the language and youâre off & running.
Google docs also allows selecting the keyboard as well.
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Itâs a bit slow, but on Mac you can also just long-press the button until youâre presented with the various options, then click the relevant number:
E.g. by long pressing A you can choose between:
There are probably keyboard shortcuts for most of these (I know there are for some other languages I occasionally write in), but I havenât yet bothered learning those for Portuguese.
EDIT: Here are the shortcuts for Mac. Iâm sure there are similar ways of doing it with a Windows or Linux machine.
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I was hoping someone had experience with something more practical than alt codes or on screen keyboards, theyâre so slow 
The article I mention has some faster options, such as Option + c = ç or Option + e then a / e / o for å / é / ó.
Takes some time to work it into muscle memory but then itâs reasonably quick.
EDIT: Two more alternatives:
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Write on your phone with autocorrect, then let the phone deal with adding in the accents. Works pretty well. I like the Google Keyboard (GBoard?) for this as I can have several languages active at the same time.
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Change the keyboard layout on your computer to Portuguese when writing it. Lots of keys wonât be in the place you expect, but you can add stickers to your keys to help you remember (until youâve worked it all into muscle memory)