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.

Back into the fray: teaching and learning

Over the last couple of years, I have let this blog go fallow and my endeavours to learn Portuguese have stalled. This was, in part, as a result of the paradigm shift that I wrote about previously. I set up this blog to try and work through what it means to me to learn a new language and to share these in order to see whether broader lessons could be teased out for language learning in general and for Portuguese learning in the UK and Ireland, more specifically.

Having recently taken up a new post at the University of Liverpool and moved back into a languages' department, I feel renewed motivation to learn Portuguese and to return to this project. Evidently, motivation is a complicated beast, which I have written about previously on many occasions, so I will not rehearse those again, here. But I have had a few realisations in the gap since last writing. A part of my desire to learn Portuguese is an intellectual endeavour, which compliments my own language teaching, as evidenced in my return to this now. Additionally, now that I have returned, I am reminded of the personal reasons for language learning as well as the simple fact of enjoying the process of connecting intellectually and emotionally with a new language and the cultural complexities it carries with it.

I had reached a kind of plateau with my learning because I was totally reliant on books, the Internet, apps and audio-visual media (dvds for learners, films, an old BBC series, and cds/downloads). These were good foundational tools, but lacked the need for spontaneous understanding or production. This has meant that I would learn a grammatical element/set of vocabulary, but then not use it regularly enough because I had done that chapter and the book and I had moved on to the next task, so I'd forget.  Most beginners' books do not have summative tests nor do they build on prior learning sufficiently. This became a frustrating cycle. I was feeling like I was getting through material and only able to measure my progress in terms of what tasks were completed. I lacked an easy way to test my own development as a learner. Also, there were several doubts I had or uncertainties (especially syntactical and grammatical) that the books did not sufficiently explain and I found myself blocked by these areas of miscomprehension. I felt I needed someone at hand who I could query about usage, would correct any errors or bad habits (false friends from Spanish, mis-pronunciations, mistaken verb endings, and so on), and with whom I could practice what I had learnt. In sum, I needed a teacher.

Therefore, a significant element in the change in my current circumstances is access to a Portuguese teacher. I have no plans here to name or review my teacher other than to say that she is a highly experienced professional native speaker who is patient and extremely helpful. The fact that she speaks Spanish is also proving very helpful. It is one-to-one and therefore is quite bespoke and quite unlike how it would be to learn in a group (there are advantages and disadvantages to both). In place of reviews of the teacher, I will continue to reflect on my progress and on the process of learning.

Already, having a teacher is helping me to keep my focus, not least because I have to prepare for classes each week, and also to motivate me to return to this blog as a reflective project.