Teaching Portuguese as a Foreign Language: Crossing experiences, multiplying resources

Code:

EPLNM1

Acronym:

EPLNM

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
CNAEF	Foreign languages and literatures

Instance: 2023/2024 - SP (of 25-06-2024 to 05-07-2024)

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Portuguese and Romance Studies
Course/CS Responsible:	Teaching Portuguese as a Foreign Language: Crossing experiences, multiplying resources

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
EPLNM	33	Study plan	1	-	3	28,5	81

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

1. Discuss different ways of approaching the teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language;
2. Share strategies, approaches, and materials used in different contexts for the teaching of PFL;
3. Discuss, experiment and propose new perspectives and different resources for the teaching of PFL;
4. To contact with different practices, enriching the participants’ modes of action.

Learning outcomes and competences

Trainees will learn about methods, strategies, resources and materials for teaching PFL;
They will produce materials, plans, projects, practical resources, in workshops, that will give them skills for teaching PFL;
They will also read and reflect on a range of key theoretical issues in order to make practical choices.

Working method

B-learning

Program

1. Module (online)
Introduction – 3,5 hours

Presentation of the course and its objectives; presentation of each module; suggestions for preparatory readings for each module; presentation of reading assignments.

2. Module (online)
Artistic Methods in Language Teacher Education – 5 hours

This one-day module aims to familiarise trainees with artistic approaches in language education and is intended primarily for future teachers. After an initial theoretical input, in which I will discuss the theoretical basis and the results of empirical studies arising from the use of those approaches, especially in terms of didactics of plurilingualism, I will propose two practical workshops: one in drawing, about the production and analysis of visual linguistic biographies, and another in creative writing, anchored in the production and analysis of plurilingual poetry. Finally, participants will reflect on the potential of these activities for their professional development in general, and for the diagnosis and management of linguistic diversity in the language classroom in particular.

3. Face-to-face Module
Romance Intercomprehension in PFL Teaching – 5 hours

This one-day module aims to familiarise learners with plural approaches in language teaching, namely intercomprehension. The module will start with a brief theoretical introduction on Romance intercomprehension, showing its role within didactic approaches. Then, through practical activities, it is intended to raise the awareness of the trainees, future teachers of PFL, on the similarities between Romance languages and the advantages of including them in the creation of materials and the organisation of didactic activities. Activities to be developed: reading of short texts in the six "big" Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian and Romanian) as well as in some minority languages (Myrian, Sardinian, Occitan, Arromanian); presentation of the Panromanic manual, in the press at Zanichelli (Italy); creation of a didactic scenario for the reading of a short story in Portuguese, with the integration of intercomprehension strategies in the three stages (activities before, during and after reading).

4. Face-to-face module
"Portuguese in Practice (PiP)": Portuguese at school - a manual for PFL in German education – 5 hours

The project "Portuguese in Practice (PeP)" under my coordination aims to implement - in the long run in a reciprocal effect between school and university - the following objectives:
- implement Portuguese as a foreign language in primary education in the German school system, namely in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate where the University of Mainz is located (a partnership with a high school in Mainz to offer Portuguese lessons as an extra-curricular subject has already been achieved);
- offer an academic training at Mainz University to train future Portuguese teachers in the German school system (approved by the Ministry of Education of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate); and
- to prepare a bilingual manual (Level A1/A2) for teaching Portuguese as a foreign language in German schools.
The project also arose due to the willingness and growing interest of students from the teaching of other Romance languages as future teachers to acquire Portuguese language skills in order to be able to obtain the above mentioned certificate and, therefore, to teach Portuguese at school. The students are integrated in the project both as learners and future teachers.
The aim of the current project period is, given the lack of supply on the German market as regards suitable teaching material, to develop a textbook for Portuguese as a foreign language in primary and secondary education according to the parameters of the CEFR that adopts a multilingualism-oriented approach.

This one-day module aims to familiarise trainees with the process of writing the manual in progress. After a brief theoretical introduction on the project and its goals, practical activities will follow in which trainees will be sensitised to the respective challenges and the didactic-pedagogical methodologies regarding the design of the handbook will be discussed:
- the needs of non-native speakers as target audience;
- pragmatic communicative competences;
- “authentic" dialogues and texts;
- contrastive awareness for language and culture(s);
- how the Brazilian variant can be integrated into the content and learning;
- exercise formats (also in digital form) to stimulate independent learning and autonomous learning and to help students develop communicative competences.
During the activities, different exercise formats and contents will be developed and reflected upon, so that they can be integrated into the course book materials.

5. Face-to-face Module
Promotion of metalinguistic awareness as a preparation for autonomous learning phases in PFL: pragmatics and orality – 5 hours

Many learners of a foreign language have the expectation that in a linguistic internship, a study placement or a work placement in a country where the target language is spoken, they will almost automatically learn what is missing in order to become an autonomous linguistically and culturally competent user. However, what can be observed is that even in the case of internships of one or two semesters, they often fail to take advantage of it to develop their (socio-)pragmatic competence (cf. Fernandez 2016, Johnen 2021). Thus, there is an urgent need to question what are the feasible strategies to prepare for the self-learning phase. Following the results of House (1996), who finds that in the area of pragmatics the creation of metalinguistic awareness contributes greatly to the better learning of phenomena, it is intended in this module to focus on the possibilities, in the teaching of PFL, of approaching pragmatic phenomena in general and the spoken language (cf. Sieberg 2018) in particular, capable of fostering metalinguistic awareness and the development of autonomous learning strategies before and during a stay in a Portuguese-speaking country.

6. Face-to-face Module
Portuguese as a Pluricentric Language and Teaching as FL – 5 hours

1. Portuguese as a Pluricentric Language
2. Linguistic variation and the teaching of Portuguese
3. Advantages of using authentic materials for the teaching of Portuguese
4. Portuguese in the context of early childhood education: Portuguese as a heritage language (?)
5. Selection of materials from different varieties of Portuguese
6. Planning activities for the different skills, taking into account the pluricentricity of the Portuguese language.

Mandatory literature

Baxter, A. ; Portuguese as a pluricentric language. In M. Clyne (Ed.), Pluricentric Languages (pp. 11-43), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992
Clyne, M. (Ed.) ; Pluricentric Languages. Differing norms in different nations, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992
Duarte, Isabel M. ; Português Língua pluricêntrica. Variação e Ensino: diferentes variedades, diferentes públicos , Tübigen: Narr Francke Attempt, 2022 (in Cornelia Döll, Christine Hundt, Daniel Reimann (Ed.) Pluricentrismo e heterogeneidade - O Ensino do Português como Língua de Herança, Língua de Contato e Língua Estrangeira. (pp. 349-362). )
Fernández, Susana S.; «Etnopragmatik og interkulturel kompetence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen», in: Ny forskning i grammatik 23, 38-54, 2016 (https://doi.org/10.7146/nfg.v24i23.24643)
House, Juliane ; Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a Foreign Language: Routines and metapragmatic awareness”, in: Studies in Second Language Acquisition 39 (1), 39-55, 1996
Johnen, Thomas ; Autonomia assistida na aquisição da competência intercultural e sociopragmática durante as estadias obrigatórias de estudos e estágio curriculares no país da língua alvo: O projeto Portico, 2021 (in: Schøsler, Lene / Härmä, Juhani / Lindschouw, Jan (eds.): Actes du XXIXe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (Copenhague, 1-6 juillet 2019). Strasbourg: ELiPhi (Bibliothèque de Linguistique Romane; 17,2), 1489-1496.)
Mota, M.A. ; O português: uma língua e várias gramáticas. Atas das Jornadas de Língua Portuguesa. Investigação e Ensino, pp. 9-21, Praia: Universidade de Cabo Verde, 2018
Muhr, R. ; Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages.Getting the Picture., Frankfurt & Wien: Peter Lang, 2012
Sieberg, Bernd ; Gesprochenes Portugiesisch aus sprachpragmatischer Perspektive, Tübingen Narr, 2018
Silva, A. ; O português no mundo e a sua estandardização: entre a realidade de uma língua pluricêntrica e o desejo de uma língua internacional, Braga/CEHUM: Húmus (. In Barroso, H. (ed), O Português na casa do mundo, hoje (pp. 111- 132))
Silva, A. ; Modelos cognitivos da lusofonia: romantismo e racionalismo nas políticas de língua e comunicação de unidade/diversidade do português europeu e brasileiro, Famalicão: Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade da Universidade do Minho & Edições Húmus, 2017 (In: Moisés de Lemos Martins (org.), A internacionalização das comunidades lusófonas e ibero-americanas de ciências sociais e humanas - O Caso das Ciências da Comunicação. (pp. 319-335))
Silva, A. S. (Ed.); Pluricentricity: Language variation and sociocognitive dimensions, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014
Silva, A. S. ; The pluricentricity of Portuguese: A sociolectometrical approach to divergence between European and Brazilian Portuguese, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014 (In A. S. Silva (Ed.), Pluricentricity: Language variation and sociocognitive dimensions (pp. 143-188). )

Teaching methods and learning activities

One hour of each session will be a lecture. This will always be followed by a discussion and sharing of opinions on the topic on which the theoretical exposition was made.
The most substantial part of the BIP will be in workshop format, so that trainees can experiment, present the products of the workshops and share them with others.
There will also be a reading and independent study component based on texts suggested by the trainers.

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Participação presencial	70,00
Trabalho escrito	10,00
Trabalho prático ou de projeto	20,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	52,50
Frequência das aulas	28,50
Total:	81,00

Eligibility for exams

75% attendance.

Calculation formula of final grade

Reading theoretical texts and writing about one of them – 20%;
Active participation in workshops / group work, carried out during the sessions – 70%;
Final written evaluation - 10.