Just booked a long weekend or an intensive Portuguese course in Portugal to experience Portuguese in its natural environment?
Or maybe you’ve been exploring the idea, and need a little push to convince you it’s the perfect way to immerse yourself in the language.
Even the briefest trip can improve your language skills, if you use your time wisely!
You’ll need to spend some time off the beaten track, and the best way to ensure that is to try out my 15 mini-missions, most of which I did myself on my recent trip to Lisbon, where I did a week-long intensive Portuguese course. Read more about my experience in my What a week of studying Portuguese in Lisbon taught me about language learning – as a Brazilian Portuguese speaker post.
Check out my 15 mini-missions below to get yourself on the road to fluency!
Living in a Portuguese-speaking country?
If you’re living in Portugal or another Portuguese-speaking country, and you don’t feel like you’ve fully engaged with the language yet, but you’re desperate to lock in, then it’s time to get real.
Ask yourself – or count – how much time do I spend in Portuguese every week? Read my How immersed are you really in your foreign language? A quiz for learners abroad post to really put your powers of immersion to the test.
If you scored very low, then here’s the good news: the reason you’re not progressing isn’t because you’re “bad at languages” or “Portuguese is just too hard,” it’s because you’re not really doing much!
The excellent news is: it can only get better with a slight shift in tactic, and this is where mini-missions come in.
15 Portuguese mini-missions
A mini-mission is a language-related task designed to give you direct experience with your target language.
I’ve put together a selection of Portuguese mini-missions that mainly covers speaking.
I’ve also included a few missions to improve your listening (watch a Fado show, use museum audio guides in Portuguese) and writing (message people on Bumble BFF).
Print off the below PDF and tick the missions off as you complete them 👇
You’ll be amazed how much confidence you build from completing these. This may seem like a lot for a long weekend, but they’re so “mini”, that you’ll find you can get a lot done in just a day.
Not sure where to start? I recommend using Bumble BFF to get used to forming sentences in your head.
Final thoughts
If you manage to complete even 7 of these over a long weekend, it’ll put a good dent in your Portuguese, whether you’re working at A1 or B1.
Once you’re back home, keep the momentum going.
Explore my recommended podcasts in my 8 excellent podcasts with free transcripts for A1-B2 Portuguese learners post, and look for opportunities to practise your speaking at language exchange events. Check out my From meek to chic: 9 proven strategies to improve your speaking skills at your local language exchange post for help with this.
And when you say something really embarrassing, don’t shy away from it; retell it to friends to shake off the shame. If you still need proof that you’re not the only one to make embarrassing mistakes, read about some of my worst language fails in my How to deal with embarrassing language errors: make them into a good story post.
Are you up to the challenge? Boa sorte!
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