Foreign Language Portuguese - Basic common mistakes
Foreign Language Portuguese - Basic · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Identifying every future-oriented irregular form as a personal infinitive.
Semantic future reference is mistaken for a morphological label, hiding the distinction between fazeres and fizeres.
What to do instead
Compare the governing construction and the actual form: antes de fazeres uses a personal infinitive; quando fizeres uses future subjunctive.
Translating propina as bribe in every Portuguese passage.
A meaning common in one variety is generalized to another community and setting.
What to do instead
Identify country and context. An educational fee in a Portuguese university notice and a Brazilian corruption report can require different readings.
Treating clitic placement as identical across all varieties and registers.
A memorized European or Brazilian example is extended beyond its actual construction.
What to do instead
State the variety and grammatical environment being practised, check negation and clause structure, and avoid labelling every regional difference as an error.
Selecting a keyword while ignoring apenas, não or an exception.
Lexical overlap distracts from scope, time and the limits expressed by the full sentence.
What to do instead
Compare the complete option with the relevant passage. Identify which action is limited and whether the limitation applies to place, time or service.
Answering from general knowledge instead of the supplied passage.
A plausible cultural or practical assumption is treated as equivalent to textual evidence.
What to do instead
Find the actual supporting words and separate explicit information, warranted inference and outside knowledge. Do not supply a missing source passage from imagination.
Mixing address forms without regard to the intended relationship or variety.
Memorized greetings and requests are combined without a coherent register decision.
What to do instead
Identify recipient and purpose, choose a context-appropriate form of address and revise pronouns, verb forms, greeting and closing together.
Copying every source sentence in a mediation task.
Selection for the recipient’s needs is confused with full literal reproduction.
What to do instead
Preserve relevant facts and conditions, paraphrase faithfully and omit genuinely irrelevant details. Do not add plausible benefits or obligations absent from the source.
Using connectors as decoration without a logical chain of reasons.
Formal vocabulary is mistaken for an argument even when claims and examples are unconnected.
What to do instead
State a claim, explain a reason, provide relevant evidence and qualify the conclusion. Check whether each connector signals the intended relation.