Reflections on plurilingualism and language education in the Brazilian Context

Abstract

The publication of the new Common National Curricular Base on December 22, 2017, stimulated several discussions within academia in the area of language education in additional languages regarding the change of the component "Modern Foreign Languages" in the Law of Directives and Bases of Education (LDB, 1996), which allowed states and cities to choose the additional language according to their specific contexts, to the curricular component "English Language" as the only additional language of compulsory teaching in Basic Education. Such discussions, in turn, encourage national movements such as Fica Espanhol (Stay Spanish) and Moveplu (Movement in Support of Multilingual Education). At the same time, we see the emergence and expansion of initiatives such as the bilingual schools project from the Municipal Department of Education of Rio de Janeiro, offering the teaching of English, Spanish, French, and German in public schools in the city. Still, in favour of multilingualism, we also have 51 cities across the country that have achieved the co-officialization of several indigenous languages, in addition to German and Italian as immigration languages. Considering all the factors above, this article discusses ways for a linguistic education that may promote the maintenance and development of plurilingualism in Brazil. To this end, the text revisits the literature on multilingualism and language education in the country, bringing to discussion the concept of intercultural language education and the proposal implemented in Rio de Janeiro, with a more specific focus on the teaching-learning of German in municipal bilingual schools.