Updates!: Smart Review, Global Search, & Background Images

June 9, 2020

All this social distancing sure has kept our team productive these last couple months!

We’re always busy creating new lessons, recording new episodes, and making improvements, thanks to your support! ❤️  We decided we’d better take a break and share a few of those updates with you, including the much anticipated Smart Review! So without further ado…

Smart Review

Say olá to this new tool that uses spaced repetition to help you remember everything you’ve been learning across all the Units. There are two different review modes:

• Flash Card Mode Self-graded review with English to Portuguese translation
• Quiz Mode Auto-graded review with structured question types

We highly recommend the Flash Card mode because it’s the best way to challenge yourself to actually recall and formulate European Portuguese phrases without hints or guidance, like you do in real life. It’s more difficult, but also more effective for improving your communication skills.

Power user tip: If you’re on a computer, you can use the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard to quickly fly through your Review:
➡ = Flip to answer side / Mark Flash Card correct
⬅ = Mark Flash Card incorrect

Quiz Mode is more of a casual review because you can often rely on recognition to get the correct answer. This is useful when you’re first learning, but at the reviewing stage we want to encourage you to take things to the next level with the Flash Card mode!

Read more about spaced repetition and how to use Smart Review here: Learn European Portuguese with Spaced Repetition

New Episodes

We hope that the daily Shorties we released for a few months helped make social distancing at home a little more fun and worthwhile. In case you missed it, here is a full list of the COVID-19 related Shorties. Plus, check out a few of our other recent favourites:

• Viva o Português! A special Shorty written by friend of PP, Lena Strang, about World Portuguese Language Day
• Simone de Oliveira An iconic Portuguese singer and actress known for her strength and boldness in the face of adversity
• Apoio ao Cliente João calls the gas company’s customer service line after waiting all morning for a technician to show up
• Cuidado com a Tempestade A reporter is live on the scene as the residents of a small town face one disaster after another
• Cremilde e o Rostobook Rostobook, the newest social network that we definitely didn’t just make up
• Maratona de Leitura Our most recent Podcast episode, featuring what has changed in our lives and in the world since we last recorded. We’ll start with a conversation in Portuguese and then dive into an extensive series of pronunciation tips based on members’ recordings.

New Units

We recently launched 9 more Units 😮 to cover some tricky topics, bring more variety to your learning, and help you adjust to life in Portugal:

• ⏰ Simple Past 2 (More practice with the pretérito perfeito, but this time it’s all irregular verbs! Boa sorte!)
• 👂🏼 Minimal Pairs (Advanced pronunciation/listening practice for distinguishing between those oh-so-similar sounds)
• 👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏻 Tonic Pronouns (Com vocês? Convosco?)
• 😎 Slang (It’s finally time to be the hip Portuguese speaker you’ve always wanted to be)
• 🏠 Getting Residency in Portugal (Learn key phrases and vocabulary related to the agencies and requirements involved in the residency process)
• 🇵🇹 Idioms 2 (Don’t be uma cabeça de alho chocho!)
• 📓 Education (Practice talking about schools and the education system)
• 🏃🏾‍♀️ Past Participles (Visitada, ajudado, limpado, etc.)
• 🗯 Interjections (Filler words and short expressions such as Ai!, Credo!, Poxa!, and Bora!)

Lessons Got a Makeover 💅

As you explore the Units and Smart Review, you’ll also notice new background images featuring scenes from all across the country. Now you can connect with the culture and beauty of Portugal as you improve your language skills, even if you’re far away.

Global Site Search 🔍

This one seems a bit basic and crazy to talk about after being online since 2013, but we never had a great way for you to search through all the content, until now.

Hold onto your butts – our new search tool is ⚡️fast.

You can search the entire site (Shorties, Podcasts, Videos, Learning Notes etc), plus the Forum and Help Docs. We’ll continue to improve it to become more useful over time. You’ll soon also be able to search through the content of all the episode transcriptions, which will be useful for finding specific words and expressions used in context.

Take it for a spin! Try searching for an episode topic, a grammar topic you’ve been wondering about… the site has grown a lot over the last couple years, so there’s a good chance you’ll find what you’re looking for. (If not, let us know and we’ll add or prioritize it in our ideas list).

That’s All For Today… Quase

There’s more updates you’ll find throughout the site, with lots more surprises coming in the next couple months.
Wherever you are, we hope you’re healthy and safe.

Speaking of which, #BlackLivesMatter . We don’t usually get political because we’re terrible at it, but in this case, there is only one side to be on. We all have to speak up when it comes to basic human rights and equality. Yes, all lives do matter, but not all of them happen to be equal targets of police violence. We have seen posts insisting that “AllLivesMatter” – those words themselves are true. However, this phrase has been intentionally adapted by white supremacists to deny the BLM movement. A meme going around clearly illustrates this: a house that’s currently on fire needs to matter more to the firefighters than the other houses that aren’t. (Ps. It’s insane to have to say this, but no – we don’t condone looting or vandalism, which is a totally separate issue from the BLM protests.)

Thanks for reading. We appreciate you and your ongoing support!