A common complaint of students is although they can READ Portuguese well, as soon as someone speaks to them, they have little idea of what’s being said :(
Portuguese does take time to ‘tune into’ and you need to give yourself opportunity to do this by exposing your ears to as much Portuguese as possible.
How to do this in a relaxed way? Listen to the radio!
Some tips on how to get the most out of this:
1 - Choose a station with music you like. Or you will end up turning it off!
2 - A commercial station with adverts is a GOOD idea. Why? You will hear the same adverts, with exactly the same words repeated over and over and each time you will understand a bit more.
3 - Don’t try to pick out every word. The object here is to ‘tune into’ Portuguese. Get used to the sounds of the language, the way it sounds being spoken by different speakers. Listen for how the langauage sounds overall, with all the words sliding together naturally.
4 - Listen out for: numbers - in weather forecasts, traffic bulletins, time, dates etc.
place names, cities, countries
greetings, words that are often repeated.
How can you listen to the radio? On the internet! https://radioonline.com.pt/ has some stations. Here’s some infomation on a few of them.
Antena 1, 2, 3 don’t have adverts. 1 is mostly news, 2 classical, 3 independent music
RFM and Radio Comercial play ‘hits’, music and adverts
TSF has news and chat, information , no music really
Cidade FM is an upbeat station aimed at youngsters
Do you have a estação de rádio preferida? Any other tips - dicas- on listening in Portuguese?