Just what you needed – another blog post referencing the COVID-19 pandemic! 😅 But it still must be said: we do sincerely hope that you and your families are staying safe and positive, and are finding ways to take care of yourselves and your neighbours during these difficult times.
Echoing what many wiser souls are saying, “you’re already doing your part by staying home.” You can’t expect 100% productivity from yourself during this time, and that of course also applies to your Portuguese learning.
Perhaps choosing a small, daily goal will help you continue to look towards the future, and help you make baby steps towards your goals and (possibly temporarily-postponed) plans.
For example, what about taking less than 10 minutes to work through one Shorty per day with your morning coffee? (The audio of all episodes is free to listen to without needing a membership). Once you get started, if you happen to be inspired to do more than that, great – but remember to keep the bar low so you have the energy to consistently work Portuguese learning into your routine each day.
Daily Shorties
To help you establish this daily routine, we’ve decided to increase our production of Shorties for the next while. Instead of 3 per week, we’ve been releasing one every day.
We recently released a Shorty called Coronavírus, to give you some useful vocabulary for understanding Portuguese news stories about COVID-19, as well as Diário de Uma Quarent(o)ena, which is the beginning of a series of episodes that follow a woman’s experiences of life at home during the current crisis. Want to practice the imperative verb form while you wash your hands? Check out Lavem as Mãos!
For all Shorties (at least somewhat-)related to this topic, you can bookmark this filtered view of all our COVID-19 Shorties. More will be added soon!
We’re doing our best to find a balance between keeping the COVID-19 themed content light and non-political, while still respecting the gravity of the situation.
There are many other themes that will be released in the coming weeks, ranging from the history of the European Union, to calçada portuguesa, (the traditional black and white cobbled sidewalks found all over Portugal), and lots of fun dialogues highlighting conversational Portuguese, with the usual variety of native speakers.
So far, we’ve launched 230+ Shorties and counting, so if you spend some time browsing, you’re sure to find plenty that suit your interests.
Updated Units
As always, for members, we’ve continued to launch many more Units, with this latest set bringing you more Lessons related to life in society. The latest additions were:- Employment
- Government and Politics
- Living in Society
- War and Peace
- Art and Culture
Podcasts & Videos
In our latest Podcast episode, we continued asking members (thanks everybody!) to record themselves reading excerpts from our Shorties. Rui and Joel focused on common pronunciation mistakes to show you how to improve your pronunciation to sound more native. You can find the latest episode here: Segredos da Pronúncia Nativa and stay tuned because we already have another episode in production.
Here are also some of our favourite videos from this year so far, with more on the way:
- 🧊Rui Senior e a Descoberta do Gelo Caseiro – Need some comic relief? Follow along as Rui Sr. shares his innovative, never-before-seen method to stay cool while protecting the environment!
- 🤸🏼♂️Jocka – Um Português com Asas – Need to be “wowed”? The idea of hanging several meters above the stage might sound scary, but that’s just another day at the office for Portuguese aerialist and acrobat, Jocka Carvalho!
Thanks for your Support ♥️
If you’re interested in becoming a member, but have found your income has been directly affected by the economical impact of COVID-19, please do reach out to us. We’ll do our best to help out with a discount on our Premium memberships, on a case-by-case basis.
More than ever, we appreciate your ongoing support, whether it’s by becoming a premium member, or even just by sharing our posts or writing a review on our Facebook page.