Session: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Portuguese

Abstract

This session comprised two presentations. The first was by Maria Antonia Cowles, from the Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, who presented How and What: Teaching a Portuguese Business Communication Program. The language component of the dual degree of the Lauder Institute of the University of Penn sylvania (an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA in International Studies from the School of Arts and Sciences) enables business practitioners to communicate effectively and appropri ately in one of eight foreign languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The five-segment proficiency-based curriculum?a summer immersion and a four-semester sequence?is grounded on a tripod of language, culture and business. An admission requirement of ACTFL Advanced and a graduation requirement of Superior validate the language skills of the graduates. The profile of the students in the Portuguese track is unique because Portuguese is their third language after either English and Spanish or Spanish and English, resulting in difficulties in separating the framework of par languages and in little background on Luso/Brazilian culture. The special needs of Spanish speakers are addressed (1) by offering a thirty-hour immersion on transfer strategies prior to the beginning of the summer immersion when students are main streamed into the group of Advanced-level speakers. From this point on, all Portuguese students follow the regular program and meet the Superior-level exit requirement; and (2) by incorporating the use?with the instructor's guidance?of a comprehensive portfolio with program goals, student's individual goals, longitudinal discourse analyses, repair and development strategies, results of achievement and proficiency tests, learning styles assessment and notes from one-on one meetings with the instructor. The modular curriculum design comprises topics derived from the program goals and the students' needs where tasks and functions are drawn from the main topic. Activities emulate authentic settings with ample use of technology to permit the development of virtual partnerships and data-gathering in language to maximize the learning experience. The profile of a language instructor for such a program would require current knowledge of second-language acquisition and pedagogy, experience with curriculum design, knowledge of the functional areas of business and of business discourse and culture, in addition to time for critical one-on-one coaching. In order to address the need for training that combines second-language pedagogy and busi ness, Penn Lauder CIBER (Center for International Business Education and Research) funded by the U.S. Department of Education has created a two-tier program taught jointly by faculty from Penn's Wharton School and Graduate School of Education: a thirty-hour Summer Institute and a