Portuguese Lessons that Actually Let You Watch Videos

Have you spent countless hours watching videos like “Gangnam Style?”

What about funny videos of people being Rick Roll’d?

Remember when we couldn’t get enough of the “Charlie bit my finger” video?

Videos are an integral part of our lives, and most of us devote plenty of time to staying up to date with the latest the internet has to offer.

But what if I told you that you can keep watching the coolest videos around and claim to be studying Portuguese at the same time?

With FluentU, you can!

Not only does FluentU use videos in an innovative way to give you the necessary immersion that really makes learning a language possible, but the program allows you to learn anytime, anywhere.

Still not convinced that learning Portuguese with an online program is best for you? Take a look at some of the benefits of online learning below and then find out why FluentU makes becoming fluent in Portuguese a real possibility!
 

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

What Are the Advantages Of Taking Portuguese Lessons Online?

Online learning has many advantages over other traditional methods. A few of the reasons to take Portuguese lessons online include:

• They’re easily accessible and multidimensional. When learning online, you can access many different learning resources from multiple platforms. You can use apps on your phone, learn from your laptop or PC, listen to podcasts, watch videos, create flashcards, download e-books… The sky is the limit!
• They use a variety of awesome tools. When it comes to learning languages online, and Portuguese specifically, you have access to free online grammar explanations, vocabulary exercises, reading, writing and listening practice, phone apps, YouTube channels, online flashcards, films and series, e-books and audiobooks, online tutors, private Skype lessons… Need I say more?
• They’re comfortable, adaptable and totally customizable. You get to decide what you want to learn, when you want to learn and how you want to learn. You choose the level, the pace, the time you want to spend learning, the method that best suits you and the app that best adapts to you.
• They save you time and money. No more getting stuck in traffic, commuting or having to get dressed. Instead, you can save money on gas, public transportation, lunch in the city and more by learning from anywhere you want… Neat!
• They almost always give you immediate feedback. With online lessons, you don’t have to wait to get the results from your tests and exercises. A few milliseconds after you’ve finished, you’ll see your results on the screen, with the additional advantage that there will probably be explanations for all the mistakes you’ve made.

So… as you can see, taking Portuguese lessons online is convenient, affordable, fun and all around a-ma-zing.

Want to Learn Portuguese with Videos? Try These Fun, Immersive Lessons

Now, imagine learning Portuguese with all of the above online lesson perks, but additionally, becoming immersed in the language from the very beginning while watching those cool videos we talked about.

Imagine a program that uses spaced repetition so you don’t forget anything that you’ve learned.

Finally, imagine an app that will provide you with all the necessary tools to become fluent in the language of your choice.

Imagine no more, folks, because FluentU has you covered!

FluentU is available for download on both iOS and Android devices.

And the best part of all? FluentU is adding Portuguese to the list of available language programs very soon!

Stay tuned and, in the meantime, take a look at eight reasons why using FluentU to learn Portuguese is a great way to go.

1. Content that Creates an Immersive Experience

You want to learn perfect Portuguese but you don’t have time or money to travel to Brazil or Portugal. What do you do?

Grammar tutorials can only help you so much, vocabulary lists rarely come with audio—and when they do, it’s often a robotic voice reading the words—and having a private tutor is almost as expensive as going abroad.

Enter FluentU Portuguese.

FluentU is an innovative method that uses authentic videos to completely immerse you in the language you’re learning. The only voices you’ll be hearing are those of native speakers talking about real-life situations that you’d actually experience if you were living in another country.

By watching these videos, you may just feel like you’re actually on the streets of Rio de Janeiro or Lisbon. Your brain will get the necessary input to believe it’s being immersed in situ (on site), and you’ll be well on your way to fluency!

2. Remember Vocabulary with Spaced Repetition

FluentU uses the spaced repetition method, which means it takes into account the words you know and the words you don’t and reintroduces them to you ever so often to make sure you don’t forget anything you’ve already learned!

Logarithms seem to be smarter than we are, so you can stop stressing about reviewing concepts and words and simply trust this method.

However, if you really feel you’ve mastered a word and aren’t going to forget it ever again, FluentU offers you a little feature I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Every time you’re taking a quiz, you can mark a word as “Already Know.” This obviously marks the word as already learned and makes it so that it’ll never appear in the quiz again.

I personally love getting reminded by the spaced repetition logarithm that it’s time to review a certain group of words, but if you’re confident enough in your Portuguese vocab, don’t hesitate to use this feature.

Don’t worry if you mark a word as “Already Know” by mistake. A message will appear on-screen and you’ll have the chance to undo the action if necessary.

3. Take Your Learning On the Go and Easily Switch Between Devices

FluentU is one of those few language courses that allow you to move between devices like a fish moves through water.

Thanks to its synchronization system, it doesn’t matter whether you’re using the app on your Android, iPhone or tablet or you’re accessing the program from a browser on your PC or laptop.

All your progress can be automatically synchronized with one tap, and you’ll be able to access your current lesson from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.

Well, actually, you don’t even necessarily need an internet connection to learn Portuguese with FluentU because it also has an offline option. Yahoo!

If you know you’re not going to be able to connect to the internet for a while, there’s no need to worry. There are three ways in which you can still take advantage of FluentU when you’re in the middle of the jungle, on a plane or experiencing a no-data day:

1. You can download the audio clips and practice your listening comprehension.
2. You can download the quizzes and test yourself from anywhere.
3. You can download PDFs with the video transcripts and keep learning on the go.

FluentU makes learning Portuguese as easy as pie. Internet who?

4. Easily Organize Your Video Content

FluentU’s system is based on real-world videos that have been carefully selected for language learning.

The videos cover real-life, everyday situations and include TED talks, inspirational videos, music videos, news, movie trailers and more. The videos have even been divided into levels to make your life easier.

With FluentU, you can personalize every step of your language path, which means you can choose the videos you want to watch and search for them according to their difficulty or level, their topic, their format, their duration or their popularity.

Additionally, there is an awesome playlist function, where you can access lists of videos according to their difficulty with just one click.

Finally, there’s the favorites feature. Every video has an option that allows you to save it to your favorites folder so you can easily access it any time you want. You can also use this system to add videos you’re planning on watching to the favorites list so you don’t forget about them.

FluentU allows you to really choose the video material you want to use, and very soon, you’ll be able to do that with your favorite Portuguese videos. Are you excited yet?

5. Interactive Subtitles and a Hover-Over Dictionary

Every FluentU video includes two fantastic features that you’ll rarely find in any other app or language course: interactive subtitles and a hover-over dictionary.

Obviously, thanks to the subtitles, you’ll be able to understand everything that’s being said in the video. But, these are no ordinary subtitles!

First of all, these subtitles offer the words that are being said in the language you’re trying to learn. This is great in order to practice reading in Portuguese, and it makes your brain process both sounds and words at the same time.

Below this original text, you also have the English translation of what is being said in Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish or whichever language you’re learning.

You can easily change your settings to get rid of one or both types of subtitles if you prefer to practice without them.

Additionally, the moment you bring your mouse over the subtitles, the magic starts to happen.

The video will automatically stop. You’ll be able to hover over any foreign word and a translation will appear. Nice!

But there’s more! Click on the word and a new window will pop open. This new window will give you all the necessary information about that word, along with its translation and sample sentences read by a native speaker!

If this hover-over dictionary isn’t enough, you also have the option of adding every word you click to your vocabulary list. You can also mark the words as “Already Known” or add them to a new flashcard set.

Creating your own flashcard sets will add that final touch to your learning. It’s you who decides which words are added where, so there’s maximum personalization.

Don’t forget to also have a look under each video’s information page once you finish watching it. You’ll find all the vocabulary included in the video and will also be able to add words to your flashcards from there. Apart from the vocab, you’ll have all the dialogue displayed with audio. Could you possibly ask for more?

6. Quizzes that Provide You with Instant Feedback

Once you’ve watched a video, it’s time to put into practice your new knowledge, and what better way of doing so than by taking a quiz?

Every time you watch a video, the quiz option will become available for it. You can choose to take the test right away—which I recommend in order to consolidate what you’ve learned—or keep watching videos and test your skills later. As always, with FluentU, the final choice is yours.

Besides the video quizzes, there is another function that I love with a passion: review quizzes.

Every now and then, you’ll have a review quiz ready on your profile. This type of quiz takes into account the specific videos you’ve already watched and the words you’ve learned along the way, and it brings those words back to you so you don’t forget them.

FluentU has been specially developed so that you don’t have to worry about remembering when and how to review. It takes your learning history and path into account and it personalizes your quizzes, making them available when they should be. Obrigado (thanks), FluentU!

At the end of each quiz, you’ll get instant feedback, which will motivate you and help you to understand where and why you made a mistake. Learn from these mistakes and review the corresponding lessons when necessary. The material will always be available for you to go back to, so don’t stress over that.

Finally, FluenU has yet another feature that appears during quizzes: the “Don’t Know” button. If you click “Don’t Know” during a quiz, the quiz gets paused and you’re prompted with a window that says, “Learn this word.”

There, you’ll be able to see and listen to the word, see its translation and hear some sample sentences read by native speakers, with translations included. Once you’ve learned/reviewed the word, just click “Continue” and the quiz will go on. Isn’t it awesome?

7. Versatile Flashcards with Loads of Information

Flashcards are one of the greatest learning tools out there, and any top Portuguese program will incorporate them into their lessons. FluentU is no exception.

Every time you watch a video and learn new words, you have the option to add these words to different sets of flashcards.

You’re free to create as many flashcard sets as you like, but the easiest way is to just click the option “My Vocab,” which will automatically create and add a flashcard to your list.

Access the flashcard function by clicking on the flashcards tab under “My Content.” You’ll see all the lists of words you’ve already included.

Each word includes a proficiency level, which is an indicator of how well you know that word based on how many times you’ve gotten it right or wrong during quizzes.

Click on a word and the flashcard will pop up. Every flashcard includes a picture, a word with audio, information on the kind of word it is (noun, adjective, past participle, etc.), videos where you can hear the word pronounced in context by native speakers and whole sentences with corresponding audio. I have honestly never seen a better system of flashcards in my 19 years of teaching languages.

8. Daily Goals that Keep You Motivated

The settings icon on the upper-right corner of your profile allows you to personalize your learning even more.

If you click on “Daily Goal,” you’ll be able to set a daily goal in minutes and see the points you’ll obtain for achieving this goal.

This cute feature may seem small, but in a world where all we do is stressed and forget about our important goals, having that little reminder can be the difference between you being ok and you being fluent at Portuguese.

Aim high at the beginning and see if you can comfortably meet your daily goal. If you see you’ve failed a couple of days in a row, pick a smaller goal. Bear in mind that the maximum goal is just 30 minutes a day. Are you really so busy you can’t spend 30 minutes watching videos?

As you can see, learning Portuguese with FluentU has many advantages and offers access to some super cool features.

While you’re waiting for FluentU Portuguese to be released, don’t forget that there are other languages already available. Why not try something crazy, like Japanese, while you wait for the Portuguese content to be ready?

And keep an eye on our website or our Facebook page, so you’re the first to hear about the Portuguese release!

In the meantime, happy learning!
 

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)