I just uploaded this first part of Mairo's Portuguese Course. Would like you all the take a look at it and comment here. Comment, suggestions, etc

Heres the link> http://www.lingq.com/learn/pt/store/29720/#36802

I noticed I got a little bit of microphone noise at the background. Let me know if it is a problem, if it is I will buy I new microphone, mine is not so good.

I will be very interested in hearing people's reactions to this. I think it is excellent and the sound is fine. I think this is a very pleasant introduction to a new language. This can help people who are not yet prepared to start one of our multi-language contents like "Who is She?"

Michel Thomas has been successful in this kind of low key introduction to languages, even languages where he has quite a pronounced accent. In this case Mairo is introducing his own language.

I intend to try to something like this for English, using other languages.

I wonder if we should stick to having our tutors introduce their own language, or should non-native speakers talk about languages that they have learned. After all that is what Thomas has done with success. I could attempt doing that for some of the languages that I have learned.

All of this content would be intended to get people over their initial apprehensiveness and get them to commit to a more intensive program of listening and reading to the target language and learning words in LingQ, probably with the help of a tutor.

This is also an opportunity for the tutor to introduce him or herself.

Let's have your opinions.

In any case, Mairo you did a great job in my view.

That is going to really help those who are struggling at the beginning. I think many people quit right at the beginning because the language is so new and fast and foreign.

For me the sound is cristal clear... I'm envious of your "not so good" microphone...
rsss.. just kidding... I guess I have a good microphone now, I could capture my husband's voice clearly at a distance of 1m! The problem now is a somewhat boring background noise, and from what I read in the net, to solve this I need a better sound card or a kind of gadget (that I forgot the name) attached between the mic and the sound card....
I'll test it in another computer, to see if I get less noise without so many complications...

The beginning is really hard. I believe the person needs to make use of the initial motivation to keep going firmly with that not very interesting content for a while.

I myself would prefer to listen to pure target language with transcript. If I don't understand the meaning or the grammar, I can look them up either from a language book or from the Internet.

I believe our members have a great potential to produce something the outside world does not provide. Things like native conversations, transcripts of real-life content, audio recordings of texts, etc.

Having said that, I really appreciate Mairo's effort in producing the course.

Congratulations to Mairo. You made a nice resource. But personally, I concur with Edwin. Maybe my learning style is different from the majority but I feel like I would rather have full on target language at an appropriate length and level.

Let us be very clear on the purpose of this content. It is for the reluctant, or inexperienced, or not so confident language learner.

I agree with Edwin and Ed that this is not for the dedicated learner like them, or Ana, or me, who just wants to get at the language, who just jump right in and start swimming, no matter how strange it seems at first.

This is for the majority of learners who need to be guided gently until they have the confidence to swim on their own. I think that many learners will listen to these lessons only once per item, and eventually will want to listen to only the target language.

However, we are not getting the "average" learner at LingQ, and this is a way of making it easier for them, of leading them on to our way of learning, where only the target language is available.

I think that one thing that makes "real" content so difficult is its size. I'd love to jump right to the FrenchLingQ items, but I feel quite discouraged by the idea of making 100 flashcards from one single item... Then I thought that even the less adventurous learner could benefit from short real items. Today I found this thing called "Wikinotícias" and read two small items from it to the Portuguese area. What do you think about this idea? Would it indeed be good for beginners? Maybe low-intermediates?

Hey Mario, I'm a totally new learner to the language and learning languages in general. This is an excellent tutorial for people like me, and i really like the English walk through at least for the first listen or two or three! Perhaps if you make two audios for each part, one in English/Portuguese the other in only Portuguese, that way we can make a smoother transition, with an explanation we can understand followed by a more immersing but still novice practice (listening to the same stuff but in all Portuguese). That's my input, thanks a lot for the tutorial and please make more!

We discourage English in the texts since it can distort our word count statistics. There is nothing against having some English in the audio, although I am not a fan of this since I tend to listen more than one, and the second and third times we listen, the English becomes annoying, at least to me. Not everyone is an English speaker either.

We are working to add Notes and videos to provide more explanation.

This lesson was very good. Where can I find the other parts?