Finished! I didn’t actually mean to finish it in one sitting however I think I got a little engrossed and powered through it!
To give a brief overview, the course was divided into the following sections:
1) Greetings
2) Introductions
3) About Yourself
4) Buying Drinks
5) Finding Your Way
6) Shopping
7) Booking a Room
Getting Around
9) Ordering a Meal
10) Summer
Overall, I found there to be some really good aspects of the course. For example, while there was no actual online technical support, there were many options to assist you along the way, such as a Pronounciation Guide and Useful Phrase section,as well as Accessibilty Help. You also had the option to translate it to English after hearing it in Protugese.
The layout and design was great, and the use of slideshows, audio and photos from Portugal/Brazil added a degree of reality and authenticity. The only downfall in the layout and design was when you got to the Quiz section of each module, it appeared in a new pop-up box, which allowed you to view the Summary answers on the actual web page. While some people may find this helpful, when you are trying to learn something I found it more off putting.
Unfortunately I found there to be another negative. As this course was designed to be an introductory language course and I am a beginner, I felt that it started off as just words in the Greetings section however it escalated to actually phrases and sentences straight after that. After only having completeod 5 minutes of the course I hardly felt ready for this! By the last module there was a whole conversation in Portugese that you were expected to follow and then replicate.
I’m not sure if my scepticism prior to the course added to my overall view of it or not. But while I did find some negatives to it I do think it is because I was looking at a quite critically and evaluating all the little parts. If you were doing this course as a tool to actually learning the language it may be alot different. While completing the course though, I do have to say it definitely kept me interested and alert, and a lack of support did not bother me as I enjoyed the autonomy of working through something on your own. It was also interesting hearing some words and phrases that I recognised, however I thought I might have remembered more than I did! I surprised myself with my marks (ranging from 50% to 100%) however I don’t think took away too much knowledge from the whole experience!
Entries (RSS)