Portuguese vs English

I have had a great time with you guys. Especially during covid.
But now I think it’s time for us to split up.
Since English is not my native language, it’s just too hard to understand the explanations of the grammar. I have a B2 in English, but I have never used the words ypu use to explain grammar. So it’s kind of Greek to me.
But I am now in Madeira, doing my B1at a school, and that is a lot because of you.
Though I prefer Portuguese to Portuguese, so everybody has the same chance.

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Thank you for the feedback! I understand. Even for native English speakers, grammar terms often sound obscure/confusing. We try to limit them when possible, but in many cases we decide to include certain ones to help some learners find specific topics easily, to offer a comparison, and as a way to organize the information.

I think once you get to B1/B2 levels, it’s usually better to focus more on the examples anyway, and less time on the explanations. In other words, exploring the Portuguese example sentences in the Learning Notes and Lessons, and spending more of your time with the Shorties, Podcasts, and Videos. Once you have a foundation, it becomes a bit easier to pick up patterns / concepts naturally through exposure to the language, rather than always needing to understand it more academically.

I will certainly pass along your feedback about using Portuguese → Portuguese. I understand your point. I think the reason we haven’t gone this direction, for grammar explanations at least, is that I think the Portuguese grammar terms would also be quite confusing for most learners. That said, we could certainly work on adding more visuals / more practical explanations / more examples / etc. to make the advanced topics more widely understood. And we already have plans to include more Portuguese → Portuguese activity types in the lessons.

If there were any units that seemed especially difficult to understand, let me know.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this and so glad you had a great time learning with us! Congrats on all the progress you’ve made, glad to hear you’re continuing your studies in Madeira. :slightly_smiling_face:

(By the way, it looks like your subscription is still active, so please reach out via email if you wanted us to cancel that for you.)

I understand the problem 100% … I am German and my English is not that good and since the beginning but the more I am advanced, I cannot answer the exercises direct because I don’t understand the given English possibilities to answer…even when I can translate the exercise to German…Before answering a question I have to translate the 3 English solutions to German That’s very exhausting😆
And I think it will not help to explain the Grammar only in Portuguese. The problem is somewhere else.

Every language has certain peculiarities and when I’m learning a new language, it makes sense that explaining the grammar in relation to the language that is my mother tongue explains similarities but also differences, because then it’s easier for me to understand and learn. That means that the explanation in every language has to be different.

E.g. German and Portuguese have some amazing similarities that English doesn’t have. So something is explained to me in a complicated English grammar, which is natural for me because it’s the same in German. On the other hand, the “false friends” exercises are totally confusing for me because the confusion of similar words in German and Portuguese is completely different than in English and Portuguese. So I translate English words I don’t know into German to find out that exactly these words have a different meaning in Portuguese. This is the most confusing chapter of all for me.

I concentrate on the shorties at the moment and watch an ugly but very helpful serial that is available in Germany