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Olá, pessoal! Feliz 2014!

I’m sure this year is going to great for all of us so my only resolution is to help you become more fluent in Portuguese.

Because of that I’m going to teach you a technique that I’ve never written about in the blog: backchaining.

Before teaching you what backchaining is I’d like to give you a very simple and honest piece of advice: you don’t have to speak fast to be fluent. That’s an ingrained myth that keeps lots of people from speaking a foreign language fluently.

If you’re a beginner, intermediate or even an advanced learner, speaking fast doesn’t mean you’re fluent. So speak slowly, take your time and you will see how you will get your verbs right, choose the correct words and things like that.

Que %$#&@ é isso de backchaining, Adir?

Muita calma nessa hora, minha gente!

Backchaining is when you have a long sentence and you just can’t pronounce it correctly. So what to do? Well, break it up into smaller pieces.

Let me give you an example.

Se eu tivesse ido à festa, eu teria me encontrado com ela. [If I had gone to the party, I would have met her.]

I know conditional sentences can be a b… to work with so backchaining is a great way to deal with them.

By the way, I use this technique all the time when I’m studying French and German and I love it!

Here’s how it works: the sentence has two clauses “Se eu tivesse ido à festa” and “eu teria me encontrado com ela”. You will work with each clause separately and after you’ve mastered each one you will say the whole sentence, ok?

Here’s how I would do it:

Ela.
Com ela.
Encontrado.
Encontrado com ela.
Me encontrado.
Me encontrado com ela.
Teria.
Eu teria.
Eu teria me encontrado com ela.

You should say the same word three times at least. This is GOLD! Fluency in a foreign language comes from many things, and repetition is one of them!

Check out the sencond part:

Festa.
À festa.
Ido à festa.
Tivesse.
Tivesse ido.
Tivesse ido à festa.
Se eu tivesse.
Se eu tivesse ido à festa.

So what are the benefits of backchaining?

Whaaaat? Are you kidding me? This is one of the MOST POWERFUL tools to improve your pronunciation and fluency. It works specially well if you have the audio to compare your pronunciation to (which nowadays is so easy to find!).

Again, don’t try to speak fast at first. Chances are you won’t get the words right and you’ll become frustraded – and I don’t want to see you sad!

Over to You!

Now I’d like you to try and use this technique and see how it works out for you. And please, leave a comment on this post telling us how wonderfully it went!