Kotora User Guide
Every screen, every button, every tip.
Kotora teaches European Portuguese (the Portuguese spoken in Portugal) through short, focused sessions. This guide walks through every screen in order, with the buttons you'll see, what they do, and small tips that make a big difference for beginners. Most learners use Kotora for 10–20 minutes a day; nothing here takes longer than a coffee break.
On this page
1The Today tab — Today's Phrase
The home tab. Each visit shows you Today's Phrase — a single short line from real Portuguese conversation, the kind you'd hear on the street, in a café, at work. A new phrase rotates in every few hours, so you discover something fresh without having to choose.
On the screen
- The featured Portuguese phrase in large type, with the English translation underneath.
- A short "when you'd use this" context line.
- One or two example sentences.
What you can do
- 🔊 Listen — hear the phrase in native EP audio.
- 🐢 — the turtle button plays it at half speed.
- 🔖 Save — bookmark to My Notes.
- Swipe through several phrases per day.
Beginner tip. Don't try to memorize Today's Phrase. Hear it, read it, move on. Repetition over weeks is what makes it stick, not effort on day one.
2Fast Track
The structured curriculum. Forty units take you from beginner through the A2 level — the level of the official Portuguese CIPLE exam — plus eight B1 bonus units for higher topics. Each unit teaches one grammar idea through a mix of drills, never just one type.
What a unit looks like
You'll move through a sequence of drills, one after another, until the unit is complete. Drill types include:
- Multiple choice — pick the right Portuguese sentence from four.
- Pair choice — pick between two close alternatives (e.g.
devsdo). - Fill‑in‑the‑blank — tap or type the missing word.
- Word reorder — arrange scrambled words into a correct sentence.
- Matching — pair Portuguese with English.
- Listen & Try — hear a sentence, pick the matching translation, then say it aloud.
What you can do
- Tap an unlocked unit to start.
- Answer each drill — you'll see immediate green/red feedback with an explanation.
- Tap the Grammar Unit N badge on any drill to jump to the matching grammar lesson, then come back.
- Close the app any time. A resume banner brings you back to the exact drill you left.
- After finishing, the next unit unlocks automatically.
Beginner tip. Don't skip ahead even if a unit looks easy. The drills get harder later, and each one assumes you've practiced the earlier vocabulary.
3Word Practice
Vocabulary cards, organized by category — Greetings, Food, Travel, Restaurant & Café, Body, Family, Work, and more. Each card shows a Portuguese word with an image and the English translation underneath.
The action row
Every card has five buttons across the bottom. They use the same colors throughout the app:
- 🔊 Listen — plays native EP audio.
- 🐢 — the turtle plays it slowly, syllable by syllable.
- 🎙️ Speak — record yourself; you'll get a percentage score on how close your pronunciation is.
- 📚 Samples — see two example sentences using the word.
- 🔖 Save — add the word to My Notes.
What you can do
- Pick any category from the grid — categories show your progress.
- Swipe or tap the chevron to move between words.
- Switch the direction with the PT ↔ EN toggle in the top right — you can practice recognizing English first or Portuguese first.
- Tap shuffle (at the bottom) to randomize the order within a category.
Beginner tip. Use the turtle button until you can hear every syllable cleanly, then move to full speed. EP swallows unstressed vowels, which trips up most learners early on.
4Grammar
The reference library. Over fifty topics covering Portuguese grammar from ser vs estar up through the subjunctive and object pronouns. Each lesson has a written explanation, a conjugation table where relevant, and audio examples.
What you can do
- Browse units in order — they're labeled by what they cover (Unit 1, Unit 2, … B1‑1, B1‑2, …).
- Read at your own pace; tap any example to hear it.
- Jump in from elsewhere: when a Fast Track drill shows a Grammar Unit N badge or a 📚 Unit Name pill, tap it to land on the matching lesson here.
5Conjugation drills
Verb practice. You pick a verb group (regular -ar, irregular -er, irregular imperatives, …) and one or more tenses (Presente, Pretérito Perfeito Simples, Futuro, Imperfeito, …), and the app drills you through them.
Two modes
- Multiple choice — four options to tap. Gentler. Good for learning a new tense.
- Typing — you type the answer. There's an accent key for
ã,é,õ,çso you don't have to fight your keyboard. Better for locking it in.
What you can do
- Pick the verb group, the tense(s), and the mode.
- Answer until the set is done; tally appears at the end.
- Your streak (consecutive correct) tracks across sessions.
Beginner tip. Start in multiple choice for any new tense. Move to typing once you can pick the right form three times out of four.
6Listening drills
Short audio passages (about a minute each) in natural European Portuguese, modeled on the CIPLE A2 exam. After listening, you answer a few multiple‑choice comprehension questions.
What you can do
- Pick a set; each set has a theme (travel, work, family, …).
- Listen as many times as you want before answering.
- Submit your answers; the English translation appears only after you answer, so you can't cheat with your eyes.
Beginner tip. If you're under A2, listening drills will feel hard. That's the point. Don't expect to understand every word — aim for the gist on the first pass, replay for details.
7Pronunciation drills
Drills aimed at the sounds English speakers find hardest in EP: the guttural R (same as French, not the BP tongue tap), nasal vowels (mãe, pão), the soft sh‑sounding S, and a handful more.
What you can do
- Pick a unit by the sound it covers.
- Listen to the example, then say it aloud.
- Get a similarity score back so you can tell if you're close or not.
Beginner tip. The EP R is not a tongue tap — it's a guttural sound made at the back of the throat, the same in both rato and amor. If you're from a Brazilian Portuguese background, this is the single biggest adjustment.
8Numbers & Math
Two drills: Numbers (cardinals from zero up into the hundreds of thousands, plus ordinals) and Math & Geometry (fractions, basic operations, shape names).
What you can do
- Pick a difficulty range (0–20, 21–100, hundreds, thousands, …).
- Pick input mode: type the number in Portuguese, or speak it into the mic.
- Get immediate feedback. Speech mode accepts common variants (e.g. both um meio and metade for ½).
9My Notes
Your personal notebook. Anything you tapped 🔖 Save on — words from Word Practice, sentences from Today, results from Ask Anything — lands here. New items show a small New dot.
Four ways to practice your saved notes
- Voice Practice — the default. See the English prompt, say the Portuguese, get a score.
- Typing — type the Portuguese instead of speaking.
- Multiple choice quiz — pick from four options. Distractors are drawn from your other notes, so they're realistic.
- Deck mode — flashcard style, swipe through. Useful right before bed.
Voice Practice in detail
For each note you'll see a microphone, a typing field, and a small 👁️ Show answer capsule. After you speak (or type), you'll see one of these:
- ✅ Muito bem! 100% — you nailed it.
- 🟡 Almost there! — close, try once more.
- 🔴 Give it another try — the app heard something quite different.
Then rate yourself: Not yet, Almost, or Got it! — the app uses your honest rating to decide how often to bring the note back.
What you can do
- Tap a note to edit its translation or personal comments.
- Swipe to delete.
- Filter by section (vocabulary vs. conjugation vs. saved sentences).
- Sync runs automatically through iCloud, so iPhone and iPad stay in step.
10Ask Anything
The built‑in AI tutor, found in the Kotora Lab tab. Type or speak any Portuguese or English word or phrase, and Kotora hands back a real answer — not just a dictionary entry.
What you get back
- The translation in the other language.
- A pronunciation hint — for tricky words, a quick how‑to‑say‑it.
- A grammar note — what tense it's in, what verb pattern, etc.
- Two or three related phrases showing the word in real contexts.
What you can do
- Toggle the search direction (PT → EN or EN → PT) at the top right.
- Tap 🔊 Listen on either side to hear it in the matching voice (EP voice for Portuguese, US voice for English).
- Tap 🔖 Save — the full answer (translation + pronunciation hint + grammar note + related phrases) saves to My Notes. Reopening the saved note shows everything instantly, no second AI call.
Good to know. Ask Anything is for words and phrases — not long conversations. For grammar deep‑dives, the Grammar tab is more thorough. For vocabulary you keep forgetting, save it and let My Notes do the rest.
+Across every screen
A few features show up everywhere — they're not specific to one tab.
🔊 Native audio
Every Portuguese phrase has high‑quality EP audio. The turtle button slows it down for hard‑to‑catch words.
🎙️ Speech recognition
Wherever you see a microphone, you can say the phrase out loud and get a real‑time accuracy score.
↩️ Resume points
Close the app mid‑drill, mid‑unit, mid‑anywhere. When you come back, a small banner brings you exactly where you left.
☁️ iCloud sync
Progress, streaks, and notes sync between iPhone and iPad automatically. No accounts to set up.
🛹 The Kotora boy
An animated character who shows up on a few screens. He celebrates correct streaks and falls off his skateboard after a few misses — you'll see him in Fast Track and Numbers & Math.
📚 The Grammar badge
Any time you see Grammar Unit N next to an answer, tapping it jumps to that grammar lesson and back. Use it freely.
That's the whole app.
Ten screens, one consistent rhythm: hear — try — speak — save.
