Hi everybody,
When I went through the unit “Tour of Portugal” in lesson 5 I came across the following:
As ilhas **_____**no oceano Atlântico.
I would put são as obviously they are there already for quite a while and hopefully stay there for much longer. However this was wrong. Correct version seems to be estão. I keep being in trouble with the choice of estar and ser - can somebody explain to me why it would be estão here?
Thanks in advance Myriam
Olá, @am.kark 
Locations are a common exception to the temporary vs. permanent rule of thumb (which has other exceptions as it is - it shouldn’t be followed too strictly). We can generally use ser, estar and ficar interchangeably. However, you still need to be mindful of the question instructions for each exercise. For this particular sentence, I’ve just confirmed that the approved question types are either multiple choice or asking you to match what you hear. So, for the latter, for example, são cannot be accepted as the right answer if you’re actually hearing estão. Sometimes, we do fail to configure questions properly, so please reach out whenever you’re not sure whether there is a problem with an exercise. You’ll also see cases where multiple answers are accepted and you get confirmation of full scoring even if only the pre-programmed answer appears in the end.
Hi Joseph, Thanks for your answer got the point and can stop overthinking it. Sorry for being so insistent. And Chapeau for the APP and professionality and kindness. Best regards Myriam
@myriam.kark You’re welcome! And thank you too for your kind feedback