Portuguese writing practice
Portuguese writing practice that fixes the prepositions you guessed
Portuguese hides its difficulty in the small words. Contractions, the preposition a verb demands, and a tense system that does not map onto English — all of them decided in the moment you write the sentence.
What makes writing Portuguese hard
Prepositions are part of the verb
Gostar takes de, precisar takes de, ir takes a or para, chegar takes a or em depending on the variety. These are not deducible — they are learned with the verb, and the wrong one is the single most common error in learner Portuguese.
Contractions are compulsory
Em + a is na, de + o is do, a + a is à, por + os is pelos. Writing the two words separately is not a stylistic choice but an error, and choosing the right contraction means resolving the gender and number of the noun first.
The tenses do not line up with English
Tenho feito does not mean “I have done” — it means something has been happening repeatedly and recently. A completed past event takes the simple pretérito perfeito. Mapping English present perfect onto the Portuguese compound form produces sentences that are grammatical and mean the wrong thing.
The personal infinitive
Portuguese has an infinitive that conjugates — para nós fazermos, antes de eles saírem. No other major Romance language has it, so there is nothing to transfer from, and learners default to the bare infinitive well past B1.
5 mistakes learners keep making — and the rule behind each
These are the errors that survive years of study, because they rarely break communication: a listener understands you and moves on. Written practice is where they get caught.
Eu gosto música brasileira.
Eu gosto de música brasileira.
Gostar always takes de. When the object carries an article the preposition contracts with it: gosto da música brasileira.
Eu estou português e moro em Lisboa.
Eu sou português e moro em Lisboa.
Nationality is identity, so it takes ser. Estar would describe a temporary state, which nationality is not.
Vou em a praia depois de o almoço.
Vou à praia depois do almoço.
Ir takes a or para, not em; a + a contracts to à, and de + o contracts to do. Three separate rules colliding in one short sentence.
Ontem eu tenho estudado durante duas horas.
Ontem eu estudei durante duas horas.
A finished event on a named day takes the pretérito perfeito. Tenho estudado means “I have been studying (repeatedly, lately)” and cannot be pinned to yesterday.
É importante nós fazer isso antes de sair.
É importante nós fazermos isso antes de sairmos.
When the infinitive has its own subject, Portuguese conjugates it — the personal infinitive. Fazermos and sairmos both agree with nós.
What to write this week
Prompts chosen to force the structures above, rather than to let you rewrite the sentences you can already produce. Take one per session and write for eight minutes without a dictionary.
- Describe your route across the city, using at least six contracted prepositions — no, na, do, à, pelo.
- Tell what happened at a meal last week in the pretérito perfeito, then say what you have been doing lately with tenho + participle, and notice the difference.
- Write five sentences with gostar, precisar, lembrar-se and gostar mais de — each one needs its preposition.
- Describe someone using ser for who they are and estar for how they are right now, in the same paragraph.
- Write a plan that involves other people: para nós, antes de eles, depois de vocês — the personal infinitive throughout.
How practice works in dojo
You write a real text in Portuguese — a journal entry, a message, a translation, or a conversation with a tutor persona. Every sentence comes back corrected, with what changed and why. The errors you repeat are filed, and returned later as drills built from your own sentences, so the fix has to be produced from scratch rather than re-read.
There are no flashcards, no multiple choice and no reading comprehension. It is output practice only, on the theory that the gap between what you understand and what you can produce closes from the production side.
Portuguese writing practice: common questions
European or Brazilian Portuguese?
dojo has a single Portuguese setting rather than separate European and Brazilian ones, so either standard is accepted. Write consistently in one: mixing você with tu forms, or Brazilian gerund constructions with European infinitive ones, is what reads as an error to a native speaker of either variety.
Why do my sentences get corrected on prepositions so often?
Because in Portuguese the preposition is part of the verb, and there is no rule to derive it from. That is exactly the kind of error worth drilling: it recurs, it is rule-adjacent rather than idiomatic, and repeated production of the right pairing is what makes it automatic.
Do I need to type Portuguese accents and the cedilla?
Yes. Nasal marks and accents change words — avô and avó, e and é, para and pára under older spelling — and the cedilla in começar is standard orthography. They are treated as corrections rather than typos.
Is this useful if I already speak Spanish?
Especially so, because the errors a Spanish speaker makes in Portuguese are systematic — false friends, the wrong preposition, Spanish word shapes that almost work. Written correction catches those every time, where a listener would simply understand you and let them pass.
Start writing Portuguese today
Write a few real sentences, have every one corrected, and drill the Portuguese mistakes you keep making.