I have been studying Portuguese on and off for a couple of years. Now I am back on Practice Portuguese (and back in Lisbon) after a gap of a year. I’ve forgotten LOTS, though it comes back with some practice. I’m doing the smart reviews - however, I need some more basic grammar reviews (and more). I haven’t really found what I need here without going from one specific topic to another.
Does anyone have suggestions? I often think that a great textbook would be useful at times like these, but I only find workbooks that don’t do the trick.
Thank you for any ideas or tips
– Will
I personally think that your way of going from one topic to another is the reality of learning. You can fine-tune it, find difficult parts and double down on them, practice hard-to-remember words in context to make them easier to remember etc, but anyone serious in any field never confine themselves inside a progress bar of predefined material. There’s always a research.
Also acknowledge that relearning, just like walking back even for 5 minutes because you forgot something at home, is a mental torture. But you are a different person than you were 2 years ago, so you don’t have to relearn exactly what you knew then.
Just some random ideas:
- Order some cheap coffee every day, slowly add variation and politeness, add a cake, understand the menu, understand the price and amount of change, learn to complement and say it was tasty.
- Walk around the supermarket and translate product labels, ingredients and discount signs with your phone. Later ask someone where can you find some product that you couldn’t find. Listen to the cashier asking how you’d like to pay and if you need a bag etc. It’s very overwhelming. To choose your favorite kind of cheese and meat alone is a big task.
- Get a teacher. Get a friend. Get anyone you can speak with like a baby and ask questions.
Enjoy 
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Good advice, thank you. If this were almost any other language (without the pronunciation challenges), I would have been well into the “learning on the fly” stage and there would be satisfying momentum in learning. Yet there’s progress, even if slow. Have you ever tried an immersive course of some months here, involving much conversation?
I haven’t tried and probably will not be able to conform to a schedule. I do plan on eaves dropping on café conversations and making friends. Even if not true friends, it’s pretty easy to become a regular at cafés or even restaurants. Many people eat alone and even initiated conversions when I was there. Paradoxically, younger people in bars were the most closed and cold, at least towards me.