Post hoc analysis

So for people keeping track things fell off on the blog posts, but I did not slack off on studying Portuguese and the exam was on the 27th of May.

There were five things of note that happened there:

1. The topics for the writing part were the same as the first time I took the exam. The format is that there are four topics. Everyone must write on the first one and then pick one of three for the second. Each essay must be between 160-180 word. The topics that I remember were:
1. The bars in the neighborhood are creating a nuisance. Send a letter complaining to the local city official (freguesia or vereador)
2. Talk about a book or movie that motivates you
3. and two more that are escaping me at the moment. As it is impossible to take notes or leave with any scratch paper I don't have anything but my memory to work from.
2. In the reading part of the exam I took too long on the first section and so was rushed through the rest.
3. I may and likely did put down wrong answers but the last time I took the test (I failed it - chumbei which literally means I leaded it, as in to coat with the metal lead) I had several pauses where I had to rack my brains on what should come next. This time an answer was there waiting, it might have been the wrong answer but it was there unbidden. 
4. During the listening exercises the proctor (o júri) played a series of mp3s which unfortunately did not have the last section. As he was busy farting around on the computer we all started looking pleadingly at him and had to call for his attention when instead of going on to part 3 the recorded narration told us it was time to transfer our answers from the work book to the answer sheet. Finally he managed to find the back up CD that had the audio to part 3 and the day was saved.
5. During the oral part of the exam I messed up an easy question which was, "What is the last book that you read"? While I think that honesty is the best policy in most cases what I am reading is not one of them, especially now, because I tend to read light fiction, as I am reading for fun, not to impress. So I said that I had read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins but I claimed it was in Portuguese. My colleague in the interview picked All the Names (Todos os Nomes) by José Saramago, the Portuguese author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. An analogy for authors working in English she (the colleague) countered with Salman Rushdie to my Dan Brown. 

So lessons learned:

1. Plan out the month on paper. I kept things in my head or on the computer too much, which meant that my plan did not have a cue.
2. Try things out for 1 week
3. Use the format, cue, task, reward.
4. My study needs to reflect my goals. This last part may sound like a well worn bromide, but it is important as well. So for my current goal of getting a job in Portugal I need to focus on three things:
1. Getting my name out there. I will do this by developing an introductory email/letter to solicit informational interviews regarding what they do and asking them to describe their company. I spend too much time in my chair and not enough time talking to people face to face.
2. Winning the interview. Based on the information gained from the first point, I will refine the questions and answers. Framing those answers not in the manner of "What do I want" but "what can I provide"?
3. Closing the loop with a thank you note/email.
4. Translating my LinkedIn page and reviewing my CV in Portuguese.

Action potential, attenuation, and language learning

You are not a machine, you probably don't talk to any machines, and if you do maybe they are in disguise in preparation for the upcoming take over so I, for one, welcome our new machine overlords...

Okay seriously, I wanted to talk a bit about language learning because this is a language blog and now I get to mix that with a bit of biology.  I couldn't be happier if I was in a hot tub full of Chihuahuas or as I like to thinks of it, vicious, wet, bitey, bitty things....of death.

In action potential is the rapid change that happens as a result of stimuli, but it cannot be just any old stimuli. The stimuli have to surpass a threshold, i.e. be big enough.  So I want to point out that mistakes are the stimuli of language learning and not acing a French II vocabulary quiz, or when I tried to be suave and deboner and impress the French girl beside me by saying "Je ne parle pas français" and she was like, "What did you just say?" So I proved my point but not the point I wanted to make. Now if I had followed that comment up with asking for her help it could have been repeating my mistakes and coming up with new ones before sunrise but with better facial hair. Or not as the case may be. 

So mistakes are necessary but they also have to be made a certain number of times. Borrowing from the word of martial arts, we could sit down and I could show you how to perform an Ippon Seoinage throw in 5 minutes. You could practice a few times and if you felt confident in doing it then you are wrong. If you went on the mat to practice you would quickly find out that it is really hard to move your body, move your opponent and time the whole thing correctly. If you are thinking about how to do the throw you aren't going to be able to do it. 

Likewise, if I showed you the conjugation chart for vir in Portuguese there is no way you would be fluent. You have to understand how the word is used, all the chart says is the subject, verb, and time sense should match and any computer can do that. What the computer cannot due yet is understand the meaning once the rules have been broken. For example if I said, "I are going to the store, you too having wanted to come" it is obvious that I have broken all sorts of English grammar rules, but the meaning is not obscured completely. So the question is does the above sentence represent fluency in English?

Grammar and stuff or why the Cloze test is not fun

The cloze test is my bane.  It is a grammatical test where you fill in the missing words in a text based on context.  In English competency tests (TOEFL or IELTS) each blank is multiple choice, in the European Portuguese exam there are no clues outside the text. Yes this makes it rather hard and in my opinion harder than it needs to be, but you pay your money and you take your chances.

There is a second part to the grammar structure which is rephrasing a sentence.  They give the first few words and then you write down the same information, kind of like changing a sentence from passive to active voice, but a broader understanding of structure, come to think of it none of the examples where a shift of this voice.

Overall on the last time I took the practice test I got a 40%.  That is not a passing score, but with 40 questions I only need to get 5 more right to be passing on this section and on the other two sections my score is well above passing so while this part pulled the average down it did not do so enough that I would fail the test.  Or in the glass half full part, I did well enough with a month left to pass the test. I don't want to just pass the test but getting a 55% or an 85% is a win.

My strategy for the test is to go over the problems I had which are in four categories:
1) Preposition use
2) Use of the personal infinitive verb tense
3) Use of the subjunctive (conjuntivo) verb tense.
4)  Idiom use

My tool for studying these items is to write example sentences out and then put the cards into anki, a spaced repetition system.  There is a ton written about it and I am not promoting them because I have an affiliate link but because I use this service.  I am also studying with a tutor and I will have her review the sentences to make sure that they are in the formal European dialect rather than something informal or Brazilian.

Also I am not a fan of mindless, wrote memorization, but there is a certain amount of basics that one needs in any skill, whether it is guitar, yoga, or Portuguese. You have to acquire the basics fast enough to feel like you are making progress and for me sitting down with my phone for 20 minutes to review cards is time well spent. Also while this is a habit it not a regular habit. I wish I could be a machine, working religiously every day going through every new and late card but that is not me, I have kids, marriage, friends, in short a life outside of my phone which is important to me.  I mean paradoxically the reason I am learning Portuguese is to talk to people....putting my phone in front of my face all the time is a bad habit but....a necessary one.

até próxima,

Motivation and accent

Why do you want to learn a language?

I think this both a great and horrible question. It is a great one because in answering the why of language study it can reveal motivations and can provide an ultimately intrinsic motivation.  However the reality is that motivation is not a binary or absolute thing.  Motivation waxes and wanes and so does your relationship with a language.

Also I think that while intrinsic motivation is good (I want to learn the language because I want to learn it), but speaking a language is about connecting with people and so I believe it is necessary to have this balance. It is like one can get better at basketball by playing pickup games but at a certain level it is necessary to practice, to run drills, to shoot free throws in the off season, that sort of active solitary skill building.  

So language, as one of the fundamental, quintessential social activities of humans cannot be mastered alone, but on the other hand communicating in a language does not require perfect grammar, does not require flawless pronunciation.

Do you worry about having the right accent?

Let's be clear everyone speaks with an accent. English does not have clear rules about how to pronounce a word or which syllable to emphasize. We learn to talk in English by listening to those around us and then we go to school to learn what symbols correspond to which sounds.  In essence an accent is a part of one's history, sometimes big and sometimes small.  I say that because time and time again the way we perceive people is so contextual. For example, I look "European", what ever that means. So many times I have given lost Americans directions in English and then been thanked and complimented for my excellent English skills. This also cuts the other way, often time Portuguese and other Europeans that I run into on my travels think I am European, maybe not from their town but from the continent. So I am happy to let people know that I am new to their language and talking too fast will only lead to confusion.  Of course if I was on the receiving end of bigotry, large or small, I would likely take more effort to mimic a middle class Lisbon accent.

Furthermore let’s keep in mind that while my fellow Americans may fret at not having the right accent (notice I didn’t say perfect) in a foreign language but think nothing of not adopting a local accent when traveling to an English speaking country.

So if your accent is good enough, it is good enough.

Living abroad

There is a common belief that living abroad is romantic, and well it has its charms but I think it is like dating. A good match comes down to three things: some of it is when you are in your life, some of it is where you are in your life and the rest is complimentary dysfunction.  That is to say when you visit a city as a tourist this is the first date. Hopefully they gussied up a bit, you get to see the swankiest places but for the most part when you are a tourist you are either living a bit above your socio-economic rung (do you really pay someone to come to your house and clean it every day or other people to cook for you? If so are you looking to adopt?) or it is cool and exotic. I mean we all have expectations for how a hotel should run and whoa to them who violate it (if you are feeling too good about humanity go and read negative reviews on tripadvisor).

What does this have to do with language and language learning? Well experiencing the language was integral to the place. I say was because with the invention of the internet (show age by inserting tech stock bubble joke here) culture is now a Boolean operator away. Don't believe me? Use your internet search provider of choice and look for "movie completo dublado". You will now find movies dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese, sometimes they cost, sometimes not. This also works the other way.  Where it was hideously expensive to call the US or find books in English now it is a click away. So I can live in Portugal but conduct my life in English pretty darn easily.  

Which is the long way of saying that travelling abroad is no longer a given way to expose oneself to a language, even living abroad I have created a bit of unreality here. But before you can say "privileged, culturally imperialistic white guy" lets be clear, this is a human thing. Have you ever gone over to your friend's house with the strange cooking (you mean your are not have fish sticks or frozen ravioli tonight?) and heard him get bawled out by his mom in something not Englishy or gone to a restaurant where they serve neither fish sticks nor frozen ravioli and thought "must be good, the people here are not speaking English".  I consider this human because I think that this is best captured by the after dinner comment my friend Paulo made, "I can talk in four languages but I can only express myself in one".  We all have a need to express ourselves, but sometimes I need to talk in another. So I am working to create those times where I need to talk in another. This opportunity is available to everyone now.

Back on track

So careful readers will notice that I missed last week in my posting schedule. Apologies, I was gone and without a careful understanding of the mechanics of delaying a post I made a mistake.

So let's start over.

What is new in current events is that I have signed up for the B2 exam at the end of May this year, or eight weeks from yesterday. There are 5 sections: reading, writing, speaking, listening and grammar. I already passed the reading last time, but it was not enough to make up for the problems I had with the other sections. Also as a recap, in the practice exam I have passed the listening portion consistently, not perfect but good enough. So two down, three to go.

The last section which is the interview. This is impossible for me to replicate by myself but I am working with a tutor to help prepare. However, I will have to leave it to their hands on how to prepare for this aspect. Also I have gotten So that leaves us with categories left, writing and grammar.

True some preparation can be done by writing a general purpose essay and then work on ways to adapt it to the given topics.  However with only 160-180 words this is a neat trick to get so specific that I am trying to memorize sentences and then trying to adapt. Essentially this is 10-12 sentences. To make the text flow I do not see it as worth the time to go down that path.

However I can look at some of the ways to improve my writing quickly. I have a book of  practice exams, which has three previous exams or a total of 12 different topics. I think I can write in 30 minutes enough to hit 180 words, then post online on a language checking forum. I will then post the link to my tutor and together we can curate the corrections to make sure I understand what is helpful and what is not.  Then I will take the corrections and work them into my flashcard pack.

So 30 minutes to write, plus 5 minutes to post, plus 15 minutes to do a correction of my own in English (that is how these sorts of things work) plus 30 minutes to review plus another 20 to make flashcards, or a total of 1 hour and 40 minutes per text. This is not going to be all done in the same day, but likely broken up over a few days.

So for tomorrow I will write a text, post it and correct. Then we will see if the first part of the estimate is correct.

  

Morning listening practice

Getting up in the morning has been a little difficult but I think it has been worth it.
Thus far I have been three out of four morning this week. The miss was due to the kids having a bad night and getting up at oh dark thirty, then oh dark forty five, followed by being up for the day at 6, so that day I cut myself some slack on not getting to the work book.
Which I have been making progress on. The oral part of the test consists of 5 short dialogues or monologues and then there are a few questions about each, or twenty questions in total. At this point I got a 13 out of 20 or 65% which is not quite enough to get a bom, but that is the difference of 2 questions. A couple of the questions I did not quite get but it is moving forward I think if I can move it up by three questions that is good enough.

Being at this intermediate stage that I am it is frustrating because of the pace of improvement has slowed. Learning 10 new words is at best 1% bump in my vocabulary, and learning about grammar at this point does not easily overcome the bad habits I have picked up.

However I should celebrate where I can, namely, I have been able to talk over the phone to people in Portuguese, without breaking into English. Was my Portuguese perfect? Probably not because the same day, mere hours later I was given a note by the teacher for my son’s daycare and the teacher asked if I could read it. Keep in mind that I have never asked for anything in English from her. In her defense we are obviously foreigners and my conversations have been limited in scope with her. One does not need much vocabulary to talk about dirty diapers, eating habits and the occasional  bump on the head. Still my ego was bruised by the whole thing.

The next day though, I had to manage my account with the local branch of the international IT provider here in Portugal. The problem involved calling them up and complaining about the registration process. Long story short there are two accounts in my name with them, one that is active and one that is cancelled. I was trying to set up the canceled account unfortunately the break down was when I tried to verify the account, I got the “this service is unavailable right now, try again later” and not “there is something wrong, please contact customer support (a not free call)”.

After the first phone call I got the response that “we will hook it up for you” followed by the second which was this account that I was asking about was canceled. However I thought this was odd as I have been paying them money and was currently using a service provided by them to both check the account management page and talk to them on the phone. It turned out that they were right and I will get new credentials sent to me. No problem.  The ego boost part comes from the fact that my name is Robert Richards, a name that is not Portuguese, even Portuguefiying my name would not work as Roberto is on the list but not very common and the surname, forget about it. Suffice to say, it is very very likely that the attendants on the phone spoke some level of English, and they had my name to tip them off to the fact but they KEPT speaking Portuguese to me, even when I had a problem, and I needed to confirm something (loosely translated it was “I don’t understand, are you going to send the information by text or by letter?)

So, ego boost, able to talk to people over the phone, over the internet (hello skype) without my opposite resorting to English. Yeah me, but there is still work to do.

So the next step is to keep the morning time and to research strategies for the listening part of the exam.

Until next week 

rituals

So I have been thinking a bit about directions for this blog and how to improve my learning.  This is a wonderful age to live in, there is, at the click of a button, a plethora of information about a language with products and services that span the gamut from free to quite expensive. However the reality is that the book, the audio tape, the computer program, the website, the tutor, the class, etc. are not important. They all serve to deliver information about the sounds to make the and the order to put them in.  At the end of the day, that is it, around sixty sounds (technically I am talking about phonemes and this is a judgement call) exist in English.  There are more that human vocal chords can make but not many more.

So the point is that the "best" tool is not the tool but the time you spend using and seeking out gaps in your knowledge of the language (commonly called "mistakes") and then addressing them.
For me the realization is that the time I spent has not been consistent, that I have not created a ritual around learning. Or let me say in these words, I have the application Anki on my phone.  I am to the point now that I have a relatively board vocabulary, just today I had a didactic moment was listing synonyms in Portuguese, but this not the challenge anymore. Once upon a time I needed vocabulary now I need to improve my syntax and grammar (and pronunciation at times). 

The meat of it is that I want the first thing I do in the morning is to work on Portuguese. The time I feel best able to do this before my children wake for the day, which means I need a bed time. I have the habit of putting off sleep and working late if pressed which means I am sleeping until a small child wakes me and then I am playing catch up the whole day.

I am curious to hear about other rituals that folks have used.

I will let you know how my experiment to go to bed by 11pm does. 

Cheers,
Rob

Wait what is DIPLE?

DIPLE is the B2 level in European Portuguese.  This is also called the business level and to borrow from the wikipedia page at person at the B2 level:

• Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.
• Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
• Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

This is below the "native" fluency and I would gauge it at about a good high school level competency in the language and C1 is basically native level while C2 is someone with an advanced degree, one can pick up a text dealing with a subject outside of your knowledge area and both understand and comment on it.

Also from the same article the B2 is about 500-600 hours of study in the language.

There are five areas of the test, each worth 20%

Reading a couple of passages and responding with multiple choice or true/false

Grammar which is a text with 30 blanks and then a text with 10 blanks and you have to pick the best word that fits of three choices.

Writing which is a short text of 160-180 words on a topic, usually a letter or general complaint and then the same amount words on one of three topics.

Then there is the listening portion which is two different audio pieces that are usually taken from the radio or television and one has to respond to multiple choice and true/false questions.

Lastly there is the conversational part. The candidate, working with a partner will have a 20 minute conversation with three parts:
1) General interaction with the other candidate and questioner, i.e. do you know what is going on in the conversation or do you look lost.
2) Talk about a daily activity, like organizing a dinner or resolving some issue
3) Given two different statements or a cartoon expound upon the theme as presented (agree, disagree and why)

So how to study?
Well for the first level reading I will ignore it. I have been reading through some YA novels translated into Portuguese, then highlighting words that I do not know (go go gadget e-reader) for later study. 

The listening I will look into podcasts, namely tsf.pt podcasts, but there is a website called Practice Portuguese which has videos, subtitles and quizzes. I find I am not really challenged by the podcasts, especially at the slow speed though.

The grammar I am not going to worry about.

The writing and speaking are more or less the same. I will write a 200 word post twice a week in Portuguese. Then post to be corrected on a language correcting site by native speakers. I use lang-8 but there are a number of them, or that is there are a number that use this feature. I like lang-8 because of the formatting options for the text. Then I will go over the corrections and get general corrections that I tend to miss in my writing (and likely speaking).

Then I will go over with a tutor the corrections and look to make grammar flashcards that illustrate the problem.  I will post my text, the corrections and a translation of the text into English, and a copy of the text that I will use to study in the Anki deck.

I also wanted to do some more fun things and this is the part where you, gentle reader, come in.

My first challenge I was thinking of going to the gyms near my house to interview them.  However I am always ready to hear what you think.