We’re in an extremely fun class called Culture and Language Acquisition Methodology, and our group is learning Portuguese! The most refreshing thing about this class is we’re practicing the skills for learning a different language…beyond your average memorization/flash-card model! We work with a native Portuguese language helper (and even had an authentic Brazilian barbecue to learn culture), and do activities called TPR (Total Physical Response). Check out this video from class to see what I mean.
Lael was building off of a few of the items we had learned just minutes before. She began by pointing to an item and listening as our language helper, Edna, would say in Portugese, “This is an _____.” Lael repeated that process over and over with several of the items, and then had Edna say sentences in Portuguese as she pointed to the correct item (like you saw in the video).
After just four classes with Edna, we are able to understand a native speaker saying more than 50 complete sentences in Portuguese (at a normal speed!) that involve a variety items, people, verbs, and possessive pronouns. It’s like doing an authentic stage production of Portuguese Rosetta Stone!
The best thing is that this method allows us to be flexible and understand the verbs and vocabulary even if they’re mixed and matched in different ways. It’s takes much longer to get to that point just by memorizing flash cards. We’re also associating images directly with indigenous sounds, which will help us to think in Portuguese instead of having to translate from English to Portuguese in our heads! At night we listen to recordings of Edna saying vocabulary from that day’s session, which helps further cement the new material into our minds. This is just a fraction of the kinds of language learning activities we’ll be employing in the tribe, but it’s been very encouraging to experience!
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