I understand Portuguese, but I can’t speak it well. Why? 

As the 6th most language spoken in the world, Portuguese has approximately 215 million native speakers. It is the most spoken language in South America with the 2nd largest language base in Latin America. The ‘Empire Portugal’ was the first colonial empire in Europe. And so in 9 countries, based in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, Portuguese is spoken as an official language. 

Portuguese is an exceptional language that is accompanied by vibrant culture. Many people value Portuguese not just for educational purposes but also for cultural purposes. Portuguese is a language that takes its learner on an experience of its own. You experience an entire culture just by learning a single language. With that said, many learners tend to skip some skills while mastering the language. In this blog, we’ll understand what can be done if you lack speaking skills of Portuguese.

If you can clearly understand the language but can’t speak it then chances are you neglected the speaking skill of Portuguese altogether. You might have either been too afraid of the writing and reading skills hence ended up practising those the most or ended up underestimating the speaking skills of this language. Either way, you haven’t practised this skill enough. For you to finally speak Portuguese as well as you understand it, you need to practice improving that skill in specific. You can utilize the following tips: 

The Shadowing technique

Use ‘shadowing’, a proven learning technique to access any audio or video lessons online and mimic the speech. Repeat dialogues with scripts. Sing songs with lyrics!

Read aloud

Readout loud transcripts of dialogue, books, magazines, newspapers, etc to practise speaking until you master it. Keep reading out loud to figure out the pronunciation as well.  You can also record and playback to look for any mistakes. 

Get feedback

You can converse with others and ask for their feedback. Do not be afraid of making mistakes while conversing with them, Let them point out your mistakes and take their help in rectifying the same. 

Converse

You can always prepare for a conversation ahead of time to make sure you don’t make too many mistakes. For example, you can make a short note on yourself if you were to ever describe or tell about yourself. 

Practice 

You can start a lesson and read along, you can read the dialogue and study to practice well-read extensively. Either way, you need to practice extensively on a daily basis. 

The United States alone has approximately 1,228,126 Portuguese speakers. While Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York/Northern New Jersey, are inhabited by the three largest Portuguese-American communities, the number of Portuguese speakers in Portugal is only 5%. Brazil, Sao Paulo, has the largest number of Portuguese speakers in the world!

Remember, you haven’t lived enough if you have no knowledge about another culture. And how best to broaden your horizons? Learn a new language. Speak in the new tongue. It’s very satisfying.  Click Here to know where you can get quality training within your budget!