Objectives
First contact is the Portuguese course for complete beginners. It is where to start when you know nothing of the language: a 100% free online course, aligned with CEFR level A1, made to give you usable sentences quickly — especially before a trip to Portugal.
The programme has seventeen chapters, grouped into six levels, and a little over four hundred and fifty phrases. The situations are those of an arrival: greetings, finding your way, transportation, restaurant, hotel, family, and the unexpected. The Portuguese taught is European Portuguese; the Independent in 6 months course then continues in Brazilian Portuguese.
You can follow the full thread — forty to sixty-five hours, spread over several weeks to several months at five to fifteen minutes a day, depending on pace and memory — to build a base of automatic responses. You can also, pick and choose, open first the themes you need: in a few days, someone in a hurry holds the expressions that matter for their departure.
Lessons, audio, quizzes and Super Memory are free: that free access is neither blocking nor a source of stress, and you are not pushed to subscribe in order to continue. The only constraints are how many courses you follow at once, and a generous but limited time even with an ad blocker. An optional subscription lets you download the content as MP3 and PDF, obtain a completion certificate, remove the advertising or choose your vocabulary. The detailed presentation is below; the Portuguese courses page places this programme among the others.
First contact is the Portuguese course for anyone who has never used the language. If you are starting from nothing, this is the way in: the first greetings, then the sentences you need as soon as you arrive somewhere. The online course is 100% free.
The opening themes already give you something you can use. You greet people, you ask them to repeat, you introduce yourself. Before a trip to Portugal, those scenes are the ones of arrival: a taxi or a platform, a table, a room, a request for help. You do not wait until you have “finished the course” to use them.
The programme has seventeen chapters (the themes in the player), arranged in six levels, and a little over four hundred and fifty phrases. It is a course for travel and the first few days, aligned with CEFR level A1.
The themes follow the order of an arrival. You begin by saying hello and goodbye, answering yes or no, asking someone to repeat. Then come numbers and time, useful for a price, a platform or a room. Taxi and transportation let you say where you are going. Restaurant, bar and hotel cover the table, the bill and the booking. Family and feelings help you name someone close to you or say how you are. The last themes deal with the unexpected: you are lost, you are looking for someone, you ask for help.
The recordings and the phrases follow European Portuguese. At this beginner level, these first-contact sentences already get you understood in Brazil, even if the rhythm and some everyday words differ. The Independent in 6 months course then continues in Brazilian Portuguese. The Portuguese courses page places the two varieties.
The Common European Framework of Reference puts A1 at the first step. An A1 speaker understands familiar expressions and very simple statements, provided people speak slowly. They can introduce themselves, ask and answer basic personal questions — a name, a place, the people they know. They communicate in a simple way if the other person is willing to repeat or rephrase.
First contact organises the work around those acts. The seventeen themes are the scenes where they appear. Super Memory, in the player, brings back the phrases that are still shaky, first as a game, then as a quiz, until they hold on their own.
Portuguese is written in the Latin alphabet. In European Portuguese, several unstressed vowels are reduced: the ear needs a stable model from the first greetings. Olá holds the final vowel; Adeus lets you hear the eu.
The most frequent verbs in the course — ser, ter, ir — arrive in these sentences, in the present, already conjugated. Vou para a estação lets you hear ir with a destination. Onde podemos comer? shows a question about place. Estou perdido puts estar into an immediate statement. The grammar of the course is the grammar these utterances already carry.
The levels use the titles from the player. Each one groups two or three themes from the Portuguese list (list 234). The order runs from arrival to the unexpected. You can follow that order, or open first the theme you need.
Say what you need on arrival. The themes Essentials, Conversation and Learning open the course. You greet people, answer yes or no, ask them to repeat, take your leave. Olá is the first contact; Adeus is the leave-taking you use when you step away.
Understand everyday landmarks. Colours, Numbers and Time tracking serve a room number, a price, a departure time. Um is the first figure in Numbers; it comes back whenever you need to count, pay or point to a platform.
Move from place to place. Taxi, Transportation and Beach give you the sentences to say where you are going. Vou para a estação ties the verb ir to the station, with para already in place.
Order and stay. Restaurant, Bar and Hotel cover the table, the room and the bill. Onde podemos comer? is a first-evening question, complete enough to use as it stands, and clear enough for you to recognise onde and the verb poder.
Make contact. Family, Feelings and Parting let you name people close to you, say how you are, take your leave. O meu pai belongs to Family; the article, the possessive and the noun are learned on the same line, in the European wording of the course.
Handle the unexpected. In case of trouble and Looking for someone close the course. You ask for help, you describe a simple problem, you say you have lost someone or lost your way. Estou perdido is one of the most immediately useful sentences at this level.
The time given for First contact is forty to sixty-five hours. That figure covers the whole path: the seventeen chapters, the quizzes, and the passes through Super Memory. A sentence is heard, repeated, then comes back later, sometimes several times, until it holds on its own. Four hundred and fifty utterances, worked that way, occupy dozens of hours.
The gap between 40 and 65 hours comes from each person’s pace. At five to fifteen minutes a day, those hours spread over several weeks to several months, depending on the pace you want to give your learning and on how your memory works. That is the thread that builds A1 automatic responses: enough to greet people, get around, order and ask for help, while you still need the other person to speak clearly.
The player does not force you to follow everything in order. You can open the restaurant, the hotel or transportation first, according to the trip. Someone in a hurry can, in a few days, hold the expressions that really matter for their departure. That pick-and-choose path does not replace the 40 to 65 hours: it serves the urgency. After the trip, the same sentences are still there to revise.
A session of five to fifteen minutes is enough to review a chapter or start another. You listen to the recording, you repeat the sentence, you read it again. Super Memory then tests the items that are still unstable. Listen mode lets you go back over the same sentences without opening a full lesson.
A teacher (italki, Preply, Superprof) or a conversation tool (ChatGPT, Gemini, Speak) can get you to reuse these sentences. Duolingo, Babbel and Memrise remain complements. The thread of the course is the seventeen themes.
First contact is followed online, free of charge: the lessons, the audio in the player, the quizzes and Super Memory. At Loecsen, that free access is neither blocking nor a source of stress. You can get a phrase wrong: you are not pushed to subscribe in order to keep progressing.
The only constraints are a limit on how many courses you can follow at the same time, and a generous but limited time to follow the courses even with an ad blocker.
An optional subscription adds a few extras: download the content as MP3 and PDF, obtain a course-completion certificate, remove the advertising, or choose your vocabulary. Online learning does not depend on those options.
When the A1 basics hold, the Independent in 6 months course continues the work towards A2–B1, in Brazilian Portuguese. The Portuguese courses page presents the language and the full set of programmes.
Loecsen has published online courses for more than twenty years. Millions of learners have followed this method. First contact is the way in, for Portuguese, at A1.
