Wednesday, 23 October 2013

What's available online to practice your Portuguese verbs?

I have difficulty memorising the pretérito perfeito simples [preterite tense] irregular verbs. The regulars ones are not so bad, there's a pattern that's recognisable which is logical and straightforward. The irregulars, however, are not so easy. How does Trazer (to bring) become trouxe? or, fazer (to make) fiz? While the regular -er verb endings are -i, -este, -eu, -emos, -eram, trazer follows its own route to become: trouxe, trouxeste, trouxe, trouxemos, trouxeram and fazer is: fiz, fizeste, fez, fizemos, fizeram. There is some patterning, but mostly its a list that needs to be memorised fully. One of my preferred methods of memorising blocks of things like this is to use the voice memo feature on my phone and read them into it and then listen to it on a loop. This is not helped by the fact that I'm not sure how to pronounce trouxe (a crucial question for my teacher to help with).

So, I turn to the Internet for help. Of the seven (?) that result from my Google search term "practica portugues preterito" two are Spanish-related. There are flashcards such as: http://www.cram.com/tag/perfecto-portuguese-preterito/7 (this one turns up twice, another time under a different address). These are user generated and most seem to have several tenses at once. Therefore, it's useful for those revising, but not for those learning. There are a few that help figure out and practice the different usage of the imperfect and preterite: http://www.easyportuguese.com/Portuguese-Lessons/Imperfect.html and this one even has a cute frog: http://conjuguemos.com/activity.php?id=12&source=public&language=spanish. Again, these presuppose that you have memorised both. There's a wiki list:  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Portuguese/Contents/Preterite_tense_regular_verbs. Useful if you don't have the list to hand. Not a great return. The results for similar searches all lead to Spanish-learning websites.

I try an English search term "practice Portuguese preterite". It returns ten, none Spanish, some are the same or similar to the above: two that compare between the imperfect and preterite http://www.netplaces.com/brazilian-portuguese/verb-tenses-an-overview/the-preterite-versus-the-imperfect.htm and http://www.learn-portuguese-with-rafa.com/Learn_Portuguese_with_Rafa_Newsletter-preterite-vs-Imperfect-in-portuguese.html, a quick introduction to verbs and tenses that is handy for those unfamiliar with grammar: http://www.linguanaut.com/portuguese_verbs.htm, a language learner's forum entry: http://help.berberber.com/forum65/15674-past-tense-regular-verbs-1st-ending-ar.html and the conjuguemos, flashcards, and wikis above.

There is a curious one that gets you to translate 91 verbs from English against a clock that counts down from 11 minutes: http://www.sporcle.com/games/benjaminritsema/portuguese-irregular-verbs-conjugation-past-tense. Not for me, but might appeal to others.

This is exactly what I'm looking for: http://www.verbs-online.com/portuguese-verbs/portuguese-verbs.htm. It allows me to practice the tense and I have to write it out, which helps further. The only flaw is it supplies a series of letters with accents or cedillas, but there is no 'i' even though this is required to complete the exercises correctly.


I'm surprised that there isn't more out there. I may be missing things, but equivalent Spanish searches resulted in thousands of results (173,000), some of whom I am very familiar with and have used in the past with students. For now, I can only conclude that Portuguese language learning has a long way to go before it can be considered to be well served by the Internet but there are useful things to be found. I would love to know ones that others have encountered.

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