Language, style and argument

What holds these lists together

The lists for what you need once you stop just speaking and start talking about speech: grammar in its own terms, the skeleton of an essay or a reply, the language for retelling a story or a film, and register. Register holds the biggest surprise for an English speaker, who has one «you» for everybody. In Portugal você can sound blunt, so people often address someone in the third person, by title or name: o senhor deseja mais alguma coisa?, a Ana quer café?. Grammar terms need care too: o pretérito perfeito is the simple past, comi, not the English present perfect.

For example: a língua materna (the mother tongue), por essa razão (for that reason), o género (the genre), rogar (to request (formal)), a escola de línguas (the language school), uma cortina de fumo (a smokescreen)

Spread across the levels

The category runs across the levels — it is an area, not a difficulty. If you practise it, you can also choose a level at the top of the practice page and then get only the part that sits there.