Basic Portuguese Course

Lesson 1 • Listening and Minimal Pairs

Trains the ear to distinguish similar sounds through minimal pair drills. Develops auditory discrimination critical for comprehension.

Lesson 2 • Syllable Structure and Word Stress

Teaches syllable division rules and default stress placement. Correct stress prevents miscommunication in real conversations.

Lesson 3 • Vowel Sounds and Accents

Covers oral and nasal vowels, diacritical marks, and stress patterns. Accurate vowel production is essential for intelligible speech.

Lesson 4 • The Portuguese Alphabet

Introduces all 26 letters, their names, and basic sounds. Establishes the phonetic foundation needed for every subsequent reading and speaking task.

Lesson 1 • Numbers and Personal Data

Introduces cardinal numbers 0–100 and their use in phone numbers, ages, and addresses. Provides practical data-exchange skills.

Lesson 2 • Farewells and Closing Phrases

Covers goodbye expressions, well-wishing phrases, and conversation closers. Completes the interaction cycle begun with greetings.

Lesson 3 • Introducing Yourself

Covers name, nationality, occupation, and origin phrases. Enables students to present themselves in professional and social settings.

Lesson 4 • Formal and Informal Greetings

Presents time-based greetings and register distinctions between formal and informal contexts. Sets the social tone for all future interactions.

Lesson 1 • Grammatical Gender of Nouns

Explains masculine and feminine noun categories and common gender markers. Gender agreement underpins every noun phrase in Portuguese.

Lesson 2 • Adjective Agreement and Placement

Explains how adjectives match noun gender and number, and typical word order. Enables descriptive and precise noun phrases.

Lesson 3 • Plural Formation of Nouns

Teaches regular and irregular plural patterns for nouns. Plural accuracy is required for subject-verb and noun-adjective agreement.

Lesson 4 • Definite and Indefinite Articles

Covers o, a, os, as, um, uma, uns, umas and their agreement rules. Correct article use signals gender and number to listeners.

Lesson 1 • High-Frequency Irregular Verbs

Focuses on ser, estar, ter, ir, fazer, and poder in the present tense. These verbs appear in nearly every conversation.

Lesson 2 • Regular -er and -ir Verb Conjugation

Extends conjugation skills to -er and -ir verbs such as comer and partir. Covers the two remaining regular verb classes.

Lesson 3 • Subject Pronouns and Verb Agreement

Presents eu, tu, você, ele, ela, nós, vocês, eles and their verb slots. Pronoun-verb pairing is the backbone of every Portuguese sentence.

Lesson 4 • Regular -ar Verb Conjugation

Drills the -ar paradigm using falar, trabalhar, and morar. Regular -ar verbs form the largest verb class in Portuguese.

Lesson 1 • Colours, Shapes, and Sizes

Presents descriptive vocabulary for physical attributes of objects. Expands adjective use introduced in the grammar chapter.

Lesson 2 • Places in the City

Introduces vocabulary for urban locations and transportation. Prepares students for navigation and direction-giving tasks.

Lesson 3 • Days, Months, and Telling Time

Teaches days of the week, months, and clock-time expressions. Time vocabulary is essential for scheduling and daily planning.

Lesson 4 • Food, Drink, and Meals

Covers common foods, beverages, meal names, and ordering expressions. Enables students to navigate restaurants and markets confidently.

Lesson 1 • Imperfect Tense: Ongoing Past States

Teaches the imperfect for habitual actions, descriptions, and background context. Contrasts with the preterite to enable nuanced storytelling.

Lesson 2 • Simple Future Tense

Introduces the synthetic future tense for predictions and formal intentions. Expands expressive range beyond the near-future construction.

Lesson 3 • Ir + Infinitive: Near Future

Uses the ir + infinitive construction to express imminent plans. Builds on the present-tense ir conjugation already mastered.

Lesson 4 • Preterite Tense: Completed Actions

Covers regular and key irregular preterite forms for expressing finished events. Enables narration of specific past occurrences.

Lesson 1 • Shopping and Transactions

Covers price inquiry, bargaining, and payment expressions in retail contexts. Directly applicable to market and store interactions.

Lesson 2 • Telephone and Digital Communication

Addresses phone call conventions, messaging phrases, and email openers. Extends communicative competence to remote interaction formats.

Lesson 3 • Workplace Communication

Covers professional greetings, meeting phrases, and task-related vocabulary. Bridges language skills to professional environments.

Lesson 4 • Health and Medical Vocabulary

Introduces body parts, symptoms, and phrases for medical appointments. Equips students to seek and describe health needs.

Lesson 1 • Present Subjunctive Mood

Explains subjunctive formation and its triggers: wishes, doubt, and emotion. Marks a key step toward native-like grammatical complexity.

Lesson 2 • Conditional Tense and Hypotheticals

Teaches the conditional tense and se + imperfect subjunctive structures. Enables polite requests and hypothetical reasoning.

Lesson 3 • Compound Past: Present Perfect

Covers ter + past participle for actions with present relevance. Distinguishes this tense from the simple preterite in meaning and use.

Lesson 4 • Relative Clauses and Connectors

Introduces que, quem, cujo, and onde as relative pronouns and discourse connectors. Builds sentence complexity and cohesion.