Hey, there! How’ve you all been?

I want to share a learning technique I’ve used throughout the years with my students and I’m sure it’s going to be very useful for you: translation! Ok, don’t yell at me because your language teacher told you that translation is bad and all that stuff; you’ll see that translation can be good.

When used correctly, the mother tongue can be very helpful. Here’s a little activity that’s going to help you with your structure (aka “grammar”), collocations, word choice, etc.

Take a little paragraph or a little conversation from your textbook. On a sheet of paper, translate it into English. Easy so far, right? Next, let it there for a couple of days and try to translate it back into Portuguese. Now here’s the catch: it’s not easy, but it’s a wonderful exercise. Make sure you use a pencil so you can erase what’s wrong.

If you’re not happy with the result, do it all over until you can master the whole paragraph/dialog. Remember that learning a language should be fun and I gotta hand it to you, it’s no easy task. So keep up the good work, learn at your own pace then come back to this post and share your experiences with us, because we’d love to hear them!

Take care and have a great weekend!