7-Day Portuguese eBook

Welcome to my 7-Day Portuguese course.
I am very glad that you have taken this step in your learning process and
that you are giving me the opportunity to impart what I have learned about
Brazilian Portuguese on to you.
Now, I don’t want you to think that I created this course expecting you to
memorize all of this information in just 7 days. The reason I call the course
7-Day Portuguese is not because it only takes 7 days to learn the
language, but rather because these lessons work best when they are done
consecutively, and on a daily basis.
I have separated the lessons into 7 main modules that each teach concepts
that build on the previous ones. The bottom line is that learning a language
is something of a never-ending process, and so it is up to you to decide
when you feel satisfied with your level of fluency.
Now that you own this course, you can review the material over and over
again, as many times as is necessary to learn the information to your
satisfaction. And, I highly encourage you to do so.
This 1st module is a general overview of learning Portuguese and does not
strive to teach the language just yet, but rather, it is to get you ready to start
learning. Though you may be eager to jump ahead, I encourage you to take
in everything I have to say here first as it is much more important than it
may seem just yet.
Before we get started on any of the course material, I wanted to take just a
few moments to share a little about myself so that you can really
understand where I’m coming from as we go along in these lessons
together.
My name is Galilee Berman. I was born and raised on a little-known island
near the city of Seattle, in the state of Washington. I traveled to Brazil for
the first time in 2015 to attend my brother’s wedding, at which time, I did
not speak even 1 word of Portuguese.
While I was there, in the city of São Paulo, I met the woman who would
later become my wife and that is where my journey with Portuguese began.
I’ve traveled throughout Brazil many times since then and I have gained a
lot of firsthand experience with the language and culture.
I have created this course to help you start speaking Portuguese as fast as
possible by using what I have learned over the years about what works and
what doesn’t work.
About This Course
So now that you know a little about me, let me go on to explain a bit about
this course and what it is designed for.
I have created this course with a basic assumption that you, as the learner,
already have a working knowledge of the English language and, at least,
an entry level understanding of American English grammar. This is
something of a pre-requisite because my methods for teaching and my
various tips and advice use what you already know in English to lead you to
an understanding of Portuguese.
The primary goal of this course is not to make you 100% fluent in
Portuguese by the end of it, but rather, to teach you how to understand the
language by explaining its structure, the various nuances, and the most
confusing aspects of it that make most people give up before they ever
really even get started. Though 100% fluency is not the ultimate goal of this
course, you will walk away knowing much more than you will need to know
to get by in Brazil.
As I said, I have created the course in a 7-day format. Meaning that you
should do one module each day for 7 days, as each lesson builds on the
previous ones. After the 7th day, you will have all the tools you need to go
out into the world and start building your Portuguese vocabulary and
adapting what you have learned here to your own personal needs.
Everyone’s story is a bit different and not everyone is trying to learn
Portuguese for the same reasons. Keep that in mind as you go along.
Consider how you can take what you learn here and use it in your own life
to make it relevant to you and your own personal goals.
Of course, you can do all 7 modules in 1 day if you should so choose, but I
do not recommend that. When it comes to learning a language, it is a lot
like learning to drive a car, it is best to practice a little each day and let your
brain relax and process the information rather than cramming in hours and
hours of studying into one session.

A few important points to note:

• This course is meant to get you speaking basic Portuguese quickly.

• You will encounter some simple concepts and some pretty difficult
ones.

• I will be using my own personal experience in order to teach you what

I have learned.

• And last, but not least, perfection is not the goal.

When I say that perfection is not the goal, what I really mean to say is that
you should not be trying to learn Portuguese with the belief that you can be
100% fluent someday. The truth is that it is essentially impossible to be
100% fluent in any language and it is best to abandon that idea as soon as
you can.
For example, I was born and raised speaking English, and yet, I can open
up any number of English-written books and encounter several words
throughout that I have never seen before.
As I’m sure you have also experienced.
But being fluent does not necessarily have to mean knowing a bunch of
words. It means that you understand the structure of the language and how
it works so that when you do learn a new word, you can plug it in and use it
without getting tripped up on the grammatical applications of it. And that
right there is what this course is aiming to accomplish; to get you to the
point where you can learn any new word in Portuguese and immediately
know where to put it and how to use it.