## Start with listening, today

This is the priority and the order matters. Ear training runs on exposure over weeks and months,
so it has the longest lead time of anything on your list. Every week you delay is a week you
cannot compress later.

European Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels heavily. Words compress, the rhythm is faster and
more clipped, and familiar phrases can go past unrecognised. The fix is not clever: European
Portuguese radio, television and podcasts, on daily, at real speed. You are not studying it. You
are retraining your ear.

## Then move your reading input across

Portuguese news sites, Portuguese signage, Portuguese product labels. Vocabulary largely corrects
itself once your input is consistent, which is far more efficient than memorising a list of
differences.

The divergence concentrates in everyday nouns: transport, household items, food, daily routine.
That is precisely the material the exam is built from, which is why this matters more for the
CIPLE than it would for an academic exam.

## Watch the writing paper

Spelling and register are where Brazilian habits cost marks directly. Forms of address differ in
practice, and the writing tasks put you in exactly the situations where that shows. Getting the
register wrong is noticed.

## Do not practise on the wrong material

This is the self-inflicted version of the problem. Preparing on Brazilian-Portuguese material and
then sitting a European-Portuguese exam trains the wrong targets and gives you false confidence
about your readiness.

Every item in our bank is validated to European Portuguese and to the CIPLE format before it
reaches a learner, specifically so this cannot happen by accident.

## Keep it in proportion

You are not starting over. You have the grammar, the verb system and most of the vocabulary. This
is an adjustment of input and a small set of swaps, run over a few months. It is not a second
language.