LASR COURSE PORTUGUESE FOR
BEGINNERS
Aims:
This course is aimed at Portuguese-beginners students. It aims to enable students
to learn to communicate in Portuguese effectively and accurately and, as such, it
particularly focuses on the development of oral and aural skills in real life
contexts. Students will also develop some knowledge of Portuguese culture and
history, as well as of the specificities of different Portuguese variants.
SYLLABUS
Michaelmas term
Lexical and Vocabulary Areas/ Communicative functions
 Introductions, greetings
 Describing yourself and provide simple personal information
 Nationalities, countries and addresses
 Jobs
 Describing places and ask for directions
 Make bookings
 Shops, rooms in the house, furniture
 Classroom objects (pen, book, table, etc.)
 Numbers (1-20; until 100; until 1000)
 Time, parts of the day, days of the week, months
 Meals, food and beverage, menus
 Formal and informal ways of addressing people
Grammar topics
 Personal pronouns (subject)
 Definite articles: o, a, os, as
 Indefinite articles: um, uma, uns, umas
 Affirmative and negative sentences
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Interrogative sentences: interrogative pronouns
Prepositions: de, em, com, a, para
To be: ser and estar
To have: ter and haver
The Present Tense: Presente do Indicativo
The Present Tense: estar a + Infinitivo
Regular verbs
Reflexive verbs
Demonstrative pronouns: isto, isso, aquilo
Locuções de lugar: ao lado de, em frente a, por cima de, etc.
Hilary term
Communicative functions
 Invite; accept and refuse an invitation
 Apologise
 Agreeing and disagreeing; suggesting
 Give advice and instructions; follow instructions and directions
 Talk about hobbies, leisure and outdoor activities and holidays
 Talk about plans for the future
 Talk about the weather
 Compare different countries and traditions
 Do the shopping, ask for things and about their price
 Go to the doctor, talk about symptoms
 Describe people
 Navigate in a city centre
 Read a map
 Write a letter/ email
Lexical and Vocabulary Areas
 Routines; daily tasks
 Means of transport
 Countries and cities
 Seasons and festivities
 Clothes
 Colours
 Ordinal numbers
 Family members
 Advertisements
Grammar Topics
 Present Tense: irregular verbs
 Ter de
 Ir + infinitivo
 Precisar de; haver de
 Imperative
 For and since: há and desde
 Prepositions (expressing time and movement)
 Prepositions: para and por
 Personal pronouns (indirect object)
 Possessive pronouns
 Indefinite pronouns
 Com + pronome
 Prepositions + pronouns
 Adjectives and degrees (comparativo and superlativo)
TRINITY TERM
Communicative functions/ Lexical and Vocabulary Areas
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Talk about traditions and cultural celebrations
Talk about past events
Develop an argument, an opinion or a point-of-view
Write invitations
Use different expressions of politeness
Talk about past, present and future events
Describe personal experiences
Write a short biography
Household appliances
Grammar Topics
 The Past Tense: Pretérito Perfeito Simples
 Pretérito Perfeito Simples: regular and irregular verbs
 Haver de + Infinitivo
 Conseguir/ poder/ saber/ conhecer
 Personal pronouns (direct object); exceptions
 Adverbs ending in -mente
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the academic year, students should be able to:
 Participate in everyday conversations
 Understand short aural passages and conversations
 Read and understand more extended written texts in the target Language
 Write short texts of increasing length
In particular, they should be able to:
 Provide and ask for personal, general or professional information
 Ask questions, make bookings and requests
 Give and ask for instructions
 Provide different kinds of descriptions (people, personality, places, etc.)
 Talk about past events and routines
 Talk about their plans
 Give an opinion
 Agree or disagree with
 Express themselves in different shops
Course book
Ana Tavares, Português XXI: Nível A1 (Lisbon: Lidel)
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The course book will be supplemented as necessary by handouts, web
resources and other relevant material provided during class.
Students are encouraged to use internet websites for self study.
Materials and reference grammars for beginners are available in the
Language centre library and students are encouraged to self access these,
seeking advice from the Librarian if they wish.
Extra online materials can be found in the Language Centre Weblearn site,
under the heading ‘Portuguese’. Students are encouraged to explore these
resources, which cover a wide range of cultural, grammatical and
linguistic topics.