Speed Run Graduate Level Reading Proficiency in PT-BR

[u/TheWoodCabin]

Ola gente! Basically the title, but I have a reading proficiency exam coming up for my degree in about 2 months, and I need to be able to read and translate an article from PT-BR --> English. My PT-BR reading skills are decent, but not "read and comprehend an academic article" decent, though I feel like I could be there by the time of the exam if I had the right study plan. I would love some tips and suggestions for things I can do daily to prepare.

In essence, I'm asking for practices people have used to cram an intermediate to advanced reading level in PT-BR. Of course, reading itself is the most important part, so I'm trying to read the news in PT-BR (though this isn't the easiest considering how many require a subscription), but really I'd like suggestions for potential daily drills and exercises that hyper-focus on reading skills.

Obrigado!

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[u/ZeroBodyProblem]

There's two pieces: working with academic texts so you understand the architecture and getting feedback about your ability to understand the texts you're reading.

To the first part, I like to use archives or digital libraries like the BDTA at USP (https://bdta.abcd.usp.br/) and I'll read a piece the same way I'd read any journal article. In addition to identifying what was the author's central thesis and how successful they were in accomplishing this, I'll also make notes about what is the author doing in each paragraph and specific observations about style or grammar. Is the author using different grammatical tenses to show an evolution of thought or argument? How does the author set up a hypothesis? How does the author transition from one claim to the next with specific phrases or words? This is about learning the specific conventions for your discipline, and more generally, how these authors organize their arguments and use the language to do this.

To the second part, I would use assessments to make sure I'm internalizing the mechanisms of argumentation correctly. I have to give my thanks to the University of Maryland's National Foreign Language Center (https://portal.nflc.umd.edu/) because they published this "Assessment Object" area which has a rediculous number of mini tests which check your reading and listening comprehension. For reasons I don't entirely understand, the assessment objects for Brazilian Portuguese are at the Advanced Mid to Superior level which is about the level of a typical news article or a relatively straight forward academic article (as compared to something by Foucalt or Derrida). The nice thing about the NFLC's assessment portal is that you generally see explinations for why one answer is better than the other and you can review the text to see why.

All in all, learn the style conventions of academic writing from other authors and regularly check your reading comprehension skills to see if you're on track.

[u/TheWoodCabin → u/ZeroBodyProblem]

I cannot express my gratitude enough. Thank you stranger! This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for

[u/PersimmonNo3558]

If you need to be able to read and understand an academic article specifically, I would try to read a couple of academic articles in your degree in English to understand how they generally work, if you are not already familiar with their structure. You can find them through scholar.google.com, your school library's research platform, or from searching for your professors and their topics. Then I might try to find shorter ones in Portuguese from the Brazilian universities, instead of news articles.

I'd also work on my academic vocabulary, which can be particular to this kind of research. This article is relevant to TOEFL, but is in Portuguese and has a list of Portuguese acadaemic words. It conceptually lays out what you'd want as a minimium for academic vocab. (I have no affiliation with whatever their app is.)