thanks Denise and Russell,

  I have flash cards (like when learning math in 2nd grade). I'm a visual learner, esp., so I can remember what I saw (I hope anyways) and I have "cue" words that I memorize to cue me too the Portuguese word.

  I got them from Learning QUest, I think it was called.

  I know someone who learned English from just watching movies and she understands it well, but can't speak very much.

  I know some Italian and this has helped, too. I seem to use my hands alot whenever I utter any Portuguese. (learned that from Italian household,too, I guess)...

The Rosetta Stone software is pretty good.  It helped me after doing Pimsleur.  I wish I could find something liked Bertlitz' Spanish CDs (Rush Hour, Think and Talk, Latin American) for Portuguese.  That would help even more.

I started taking baby steps I guess when I first started learning. I started with a workbook called Portuguese in 10 minutes a day. Silly as it sounds, it was extremely helpful. it provided great lessons, flash cards and little stickers which I have all over my house with the different things in Portuguese. Every time you walk by a sticker taje the time to say it. I also did a short BBC languange free online course which I thought extremely neat. It is useful phrases, and the way they do it is great. You can repeat somethng as many times as you want with Portuguese or English writing, but helps you pronounce things. Then it shows a video of the people in conversations using the phrases you just learned. It helped me so much to hear the native speakers just conversing. You have to complete the steps in order, but I thought it was great.

That isn't going to have you proficient, but it was something a little different that I found quite useful for the beginner. It really did help me to hear and understand the words. And it is free

Sure, here it is.  I meant to do it with the post.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/portuguese/talk/index.s html