I have just used this for the first time. It is another string to my bow!
That said I would love the spoken Portuguese to come first…just as it would in the street. Are there any plans for that Joel.
Best regards
Mac
I’m in Porto,Coimbra, Lisboa and Olhao in 6 weeks and looking forward to the challenge.
This should be resolved! I think it was related to a bug where some of the hints that tell you which verb conjugation to use (eg. for knowing which version of “you” to use in Portuguese, or when referring to multiple people). They were getting expanded in the middle of words, so the “pl” in “apples” maybe have sounded like “The applural…” Let me know if anything else strange pops up!
Are you able to let us know which phrases they were? We’ll take a look.
Yes, we would love to do something like this. Would you prefer it be audio for on-the-go? Asking because I have imagined doing something like this, but in video. Almost like a choose-your-own-adventure game where you can choose between multiple answers and the video clips change accordingly. If we do something audio-only, it would be good for on-the-go, but if it were video, then we’d be able to provide more feedback to help the learner, since it could be frustrating if you’re only listening and don’t have an easy way to get more context on a question or answer…
Thanks for your feedback, and keep it coming!
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Have a great trip, sounds like it will be great practice!
In this case, although there is a place for something more immersive with only Portuguese prompts, this tool is meant for building vocabulary (pulling from your Smart Review phrases). If it were Portuguese first, then you would just be training recognition / comprehension. I’d love to expand this to other activities, but might not be suitable for a Smart Review mode, since we want you to have to dig around in your brain for the Portuguese word/phrase.
What are your thoughts on something like @misteri2511 just mentioned? Would you prefer audio-only comprehension exercises (not based on Smart Review but from different phrases), or something visual where we can provide you with more context as you go?
I’ve been using the new audio smart review for the last couple of weeks and I love it! What a fantastic new addition to what is already an amazing language learning suite! Cooking and washing-up really fly by now. Just a couple of suggestions:
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When you mark the individual phrases before submitting the review, is it possible to add an option ‘Mark as Mastered’ (like there is in the Flashcard review) in addition to ´Remove from Smart Review´. If I feel I’ve mastered a phrase, I think it’s great to be able to retain the phrases in my Mastered list (to look over from time to time) rather than removing them completely from the review.
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If I play the generated audio review whilst still online, the in-page audio player is very small and difficult to control accurately. Occasionally I miss the English phrase and would like to rewind it to play it again. It’s ok to hit Pause, but trying to rewind to the right place using the slider is very difficult. I wonder if it’s possible to use an audio player with a Rewind/forward 10 seconds option?
Thank you so much for developing such a fun way to learn Portuguese!
Esqueci-me escrever uma coisa em português! Então, muito obrigado por tudo!
Hi Joel.
Yes I support that approach by mister2511. It is the common situations which we meet everyday that matter to me.
I started my Portuguese “journey” by learning how to order a beer, get my fish cleaned in the market etc, say hi to my host on arrival…stuff like that.
I still get “turned off” by phrases about baccalaureate degrees and the more complicated and less everyday stuff. Not that knowing them is wrong… just not for me yet at my stage in learning not as a resident but as a regular visitor. Just proves that “you cant please all of the people all of the time”.
Mac
PS Joel. Could you email me please so I can respond direct to your inbox… I want to raise a subject with you privately.
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One thing that you probably realize but others might not, is that you can skip lessons and entire Units as needed, since as you say, we all have different needs for learning the language. Although it goes against the completionist part of us that we have inside us to varying degrees, this is a strength we has as adult learners, is the insight about what material is relevant to our goals and which isn’t.
That’s also why we are emphasizing more the manual curating of Smart Review. Instead of adding all phrases of a lesson to your Smart Review like we used to, you have to add them yourself, which gives you a chance to think about whether you really need to be learning about all the names of the animals in the zoo when you really need to be focussing on buying groceries or dining out.
As we go forward, we want to emphasize this custom aspect more and more, so it’s clearer that you can create your own path, which is easy to miss with the way we currently have all the Units laid out in one sequential stream.
Mac (and others), any time you find that we are missing content that would be useful to you, please send us a message, since we’re always prioritizing which future Units we should tackle next. And don’t forget to check in other areas like the Shorties, since, although the learning style is a bit more immersive, there are often useful phrases you can collect.
Mac, I know you’ve been with us for a while from well before we made the change to not add all phrases to Smart Review by default. So let us know if you’d like us to reset your Smart Review to start fresh so you can go and collect new phrases. Feel free to mention specific topics you’d like to focus on and we can point you in the right direction!
Abraço!
Thanks Joel.
I did all the Units and am glad that I did. The overall learning is so important. And as far as Smart Review is concerned, I am happy that the non-everyday things crop up. They have ther place in learning.
And I never remove phrases from Smart Review, even those I know well,…repetition is so important! That I have about 2400 phrases there doesnt fase me at all…
It may seem a contradiction to my earlier reply…life is often a series of contradictions!!
It was the Audio version that made me refer to concentrating on the “everyday”.
But I will have a look to see if there are any manual changes that suit me.
Cumprimentos. Fica bem.
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Not all audio reviews are showing up in my RSS feed. Is there a limit to how many audio reviews can be sent to the RSS feed at any one time?
Just considering adjusting the titles and/or adding an option to choose a review name… Wondering what the use case is for you? For me, I don’t consider an audio review as something I’ll need to listen to multiple times or keep around / organize, so as long as it shows as the most recent review in my podcast app, the title hasn’t mattered. But I’d like to hear your use case, in case we can adapt the tool to additional purposes.
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Thanks for checking it out! I just talked to our dev who worked on it, and we currently only display the last 10 reviews on the page and in the rss podcast feed.
However, that limit is pretty low, so I’ve asked him to increase it to double it to 20, which should take effect within the next few minutes.
Note that if you’re using our app, you can click a review’s Download button, and it will be saved to the Downloads section indefinitely (unless you install the app).
Out of curiosity, what is your use case for wanting to go back so far? We’re considering other audio-only activities, and while I consider these audio Smart Review sessions to be most useful in the short term, I’d like to know what your use case is to see how we can evolve this feature. Thanks again!
I’m sorry if I maybe wasn’t clear. I wanted to load up on a few current reviews for a longer walk. So I generated 30 phrases and marked them clear and generated another 30, etc. Only one showed up my in RSS feed and then 3 hours later the other 2 popped up in my feed. I had a similar issue yesterday, so I figured the amount of items that could be added to the RSS feed during a certain time period might be limited.
Otherwise I’m really enjoying this feature!
Ah ok thanks for the elaboration! In my own experience, I think this may have to do with the podcast app not updating feeds immediately. In the app I prefer (Overcast), and presumably others, you often have to navigate to the podcast feed then swipe down (or click a button) to force the feed to refresh.
If you’re still having trouble, let me know and I can share a link with you privately where you can go to see whether the feed has successfully updated on our end (to know whether it has to do with your podcatcher app or a bug on our end).
Thanks again and keep the feedback coming!
I think if it was video you could include some visual clues as context, so similar to some real life situations. Audio only would be helpful for things like making phone calls. Anything that encourages us to listen, get the gist and come up with some sort of comprehnsible response would be great! One of the great things about your audio clips is the exposure to a variety of accents.
I’ve recently started using audio review and I love it! I’ve finally found a format that I can really use consistently, eg doing the review while cleaning the bathroom 
However there’s this bug that each time at I think 8 minutes 12 seconds it pauses. I press play and it goes to 0 seconds. I manually go forward to those 8 minutes and play it again. After that, no more issues 
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In some cases I find the video recordings of speakers to be difficult to understand because of background noise. I have exactly the same issue in languages which I master at a native level (I think it’s called “cocktail deafness”). I think your suggestion is an excellent one, but perhaps some of these clips should be re-engineered to reduce the extraneous noise.
I was delighted to discover this option and have used it several times already. I really appreciate the different forms in which PP’s review resources can be constructed. Next time I have a long drive to do, I plan to make the mother of all audio reviews using this feature!