Portuguese Course Research Articles

Neither Portugal nor Brazil: An Investigation of the Decolonial Efforts in Instructional Materials Adopted in Early Portuguese Courses at US Universities

Abstract: This study investigates the efforts towards promoting the decolonial teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language in instructional materials adopted in early Portuguese courses at higher education institutions in the United States. A framework for qualitative analysis of course materials, textbooks, and syllabi was designed based on Zavala's (2016) model for decolonial education and Rodríguez's (2015) studies on deep and surface culture. Eleven Portuguese undergraduate language programs in the United States submitted materials for consideration. Seven of these programs use the same textbook, which splits its linguistic and cultural instruction between Brazil and Portugal, and often presents limited views of other Portuguese-speaking countries. Two programs replace Portugal for Brazil as the core linguistic and cultural content of their course, which may suggest a shift away from colonialism, but towards economic power. The remaining materials adopted by two programs, however, promote the pluricentricity of Portuguese and delve into issues beyond surface-level celebrations of culture or the dissemination of factual information about minority Portuguesespeaking countries. Their materials expose the power imbalances between all Portuguese-speaking countries and give learners the opportunity to hear from the subalterns. Findings show a shortage of Portuguese-oriented materials as well as resources for decolonial language teaching. To help address this shortage, intervention ideas for educators planning to promote decolonial thinking in the Portuguese classroom are proposed.

Implementation of Feature Selection Strategies to Enhance Classification Using XGBoost and Decision Tree

Purpose: Grades in the world of education are often a benchmark for students to be considered successful or not during the learning period. The facilities and teaching staff provided by schools with the same portion do not make student grades the same, the value gap is still found in every school. The purpose of this research is to produce a better accuracy rate by applying feature selection Information Gain (IG), Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), Lasso, and Hybrid (RFE + Mutual Information) using XGBoost and Decision Tree models.Methods: This research was conducted using 649 Portuguese course student data that had been pre-processed according to data requirements, then, feature selection was carried out to select features that affect the target, after that all data can be classified using XGBoost and Decision tree, finally evaluating and displaying the results. Results: The results showed that feature selection Information Gain combined with the XGBoost algorithm has the best accuracy results compared to others, which is 81.53%.Novelty: The contribution of this research is to improve the classification accuracy results of previous research by using 2 traditional machine learning algorithms and some feature selection.

Predicting secondary school student performance using a double particle swarm optimization-based categorical boosting model

Knowing the potential students who will fail the final exam at early stages is very challenging but important for the decision-makers in the educational institutions to take proper actions to prevent them from failure. To accurately predict the secondary school student performance, we propose a double particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based categorical boosting (P2CatBoost) model based on the demographic, school period grades, and social/school related features. Considering the machine learning models are sensitive to their hyper-parameter settings, we introduce the PSO to optimize the fitness function. In addition, the threshold of a standard binary classification task is 0.5, which might not be the optimal value in real-world applications. Thus, we optimize this threshold by the PSO. To evaluate the performance of our proposed model, two datasets downloaded from the University of California, Irvine Repository and the Kaggle, respectively, are used. The experimental results showed that our proposed P2CatBoost has the best performance in terms of all the metrics used. Our proposed P2CatBoost has the best accuracy of 96.62% and 94.45% for the final grade prediction of the Mathematics and Portuguese courses, respectively. In addition, our proposed model outperforms the other models under comparison from 4.5% to 8.3%. The statistical analyses verify that our P2CatBoost can significantly outperform the comparing models. These results confirm the effectiveness of our double PSO for improving the performance of student performance prediction, indicating our proposed model could be a useful tool in educational institutions to improve the quality of education.

Social inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers: The role of public libraries in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

Social inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers includes addressing their information needs. This research seeks to examine the role of public libraries in this process through the analysis of public librarians’ perceptions. Based on the constructivist paradigm, the case study method, and the semi-directive interview survey technique, 16 public municipal libraries in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Portugal) are studied. The results highlight that these libraries do not identify forced migrants as their users. Still, they consider that the information needs and behaviors and the use of libraries by these communities are similar to those of economic migrants, with emphasis on the relevance of free access to the internet, foreign language resources, Portuguese language and digital literacy courses, and help to interact with online platforms. The gaps include the existence of few Portuguese courses for foreigners, a limited practice in assisting with job and housing searches, promoting health literacy, and inclusive collaboration with schools, as well as space, financial, and human resources constraints. To overcome these difficulties, librarians emphasize the motivation to fulfill the inclusive social mission of the public library, the universal accessibility and informal environment of the library, and its action to promote social cohesion and social capital. The respondents consider that the mission of public libraries is adjusted to the goal of social inclusion of forced migrants, but that there is room for improvement in the training of librarians. This research points to the need for more initiative-taking public library collaboration with existing inclusion networks. In conclusion, we seek to alert to the urgency of the involvement of Portuguese public libraries in the social inclusion of forced migrants, which will also contribute to their institutional legitimization.

Desenvolvimento e Prática do Modelo de Ensino Intercultural no Curso Elementar de Português como Língua Estrangeira para o Estudante Universitário

Currently, although there has been extensive discussion on the importance of intercultural competence, there are few studies on the development of intercultural competence in the teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language. Based on the characteristics and difficulties of the basic Portuguese course in higher education, this study builds a “four in one”intercultural teaching model from four aspects, including teaching objectives, pedagogical contents, teaching strategies and evaluation methods. This study also verifies the effect of the model based on dates collected during a teaching experience in a Portuguese course for beginners, in a Chinese university, during two semesters. The results of quantitative and qualitative analysis demonstrate that this teaching model has achieved the objectives outlined, developing both linguistic competence and intercultural competence.

An Improved Early Student’s Academic Performance Prediction Using Deep Learning

Nowadays due to technological revolution huge amount of data is generated in every fields including education as well. Extracting the useful insights from consequential data is a very critical task. Moreover, advancement in the deep learning techniques resulted in the effective prediction and analysis of data. In our proposed study deep learning model is be used for predicting the student’s academic performance. Experiments were performed using the two courses da-ta i.e., mathematics and Portuguese course. The data set contains demograph-ic, social, educational and students course grade data. The data set suffers from the imbalance, SMOTE (synthetic minority oversampling technique) is used. We evaluate the performance of the proposed model using several fea-ture sets and evaluation measures such as precision, recall, F-score, and ac-curacy. The result showed the significance of the proposed deep learning mod-el in early prediction of the students’ academic performance. The model achieved an accuracy of 0.964 for Portuguese course data set and 0.932 using mathematics course data set. Similarly, the precision of 0.99 for Portuguese and 0.94 for mathematics.

Acculturation and employment dynamics in a Brazilian NGO aimed at Haitian refugees’ social integration

Abstract Since the earthquake in 2010, over one hundred thousand Haitians have migrated to Brazil. The issue of employment and cultural integration of refugees received intense attention from civil society between the years of 2016 and 2018, a period of economic crisis and double-digit unemployment rates in Brazil. This article aims to understand how the employment and social integration processes were combined into the activities of an NGO that works with Haitian refugees. It also investigates how these activities were adjusted to changing economic circumstances in the host country. We adopted Berry’s theoretical approach (Berry, 1997) and explored in depth the activities organized by the NGO: intercultural seminars, conversation circles, Portuguese courses, seminars for employers, mediated job interviews, and company visits after employment. We conducted in-depth interviews with the administrators, non-participant observation of the activities and documental analysis. The data was treated through content analysis (Bardin, 2008), allowing us to capture how the activities were implemented, their goals, and the organizational values that underpinned them. This study expands the literature on refugee integration by presenting the processes of employment and acculturation as inseparable phenomena, that precede or follow one another according to the socioeconomic condition of the host country and the profile of the migratory wave. By adopting the perspective of the NGO administrators, it also provides a practical contribution to legislators and social entrepreneurs who desire to structure programs for refugees that are regular, cohesive and coherent.

Compulsão alimentar em universitários de uma cidade de médio porte do Rio Grande do Sul

Introduction: Eating disorders are common in the university environment and binge eating is associated with females, the presence of overweight and obesity, it is more common in students of Health field courses and in people who highly value the physical body. The present study aimed to evaluate the frequency of binge eating in university students in a medium-sized city in Rio Grande do Sul. Methods: Cross-sectional and descriptive study with university students, adults, of both sexes, regularly enrolled in Nutrition and Literature courses / Portuguese Federal University of Pelotas. Participants were weighed and answered a self-administered questionnaire on socioeconomic conditions, eating and living habits, as well as a questionnaire containing the Periodic Eating Compulsion Scale. The data collected were analyzed using Microsoft Excel® Software and statistical analyzes were performed using the Stata® 14.0 statistical package, with a 5% significance level (p <0.05). Results: The majority of the sample is female (81.7%), with a mean age of 25.4 years and with nutritional status classified as eutrophic (65.2%). As for eating habits, there was no adequacy regarding the consumption of beans, milk, fruits and vegetables. Binge eating disorder was identified in 9.6% of students, being more prevalent in the Language / Portuguese course (14.7%) and 52.2% of students reported perceiving episodes of binge eating. Conclusion: The sample studied shows inappropriate eating behavior and a significant perception of binge eating. It is suggested that the University implement the use of questionnaires to assess the presence of eating disorders in its students, enabling constant research and enabling the consolidation of a psychological and nutritional support service to students who need it.

Chinese-Portuguese bilingual’s phonological awareness: annotations

Economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries have increased, as consequence more universities began offering Portuguese courses and the demand of Portuguese/Chinese bilinguals increased in China. However, the principal focus is mostly on areas such as grammar, translation and literature; also in terms of research, those areas are preferred, leaving for second place important linguistic aspects of Portuguese language. This study aims to identify some of the characteristics of the development of European Portuguese’s phonological awareness of Chinese speakers. By conducting different tests, we are able to highlight some of the characteristics and most common difficulties presented by Chinese speakers learning Portuguese. Furthermore, one present some suggestions in order to help both teachers and students overcoming some obstacles. On our study, we gathered data from 40 informants (average age 18-23 years) answers to the surveys and tasks covering the three types of phonological awareness. The more evident characteristics of phonological awareness development by Chinese speakers, include: 1) third-year subjects performance is better than first-year’s; 2) Phoneme awareness is slightly inferior to the syllable awareness; 3) Third-year students present better results on syllable awareness performance then in phonemic; 5) the pair [p, b] discrimination is the most difficult. According to the characteristics of phonological awareness development and learning habits of Chinese speakers, it is desirable to explore methodologies that combine games, tests, activities that may dynamically stimulate and mature phonological awareness.Keywords: Portuguese as a foreign language; phonological awareness; Chinese speakers.

Estratégias de polidez no gênero carta de leitor no contexto de português brasileiro como língua adicional

This work aims to investigate how a student at the intermediate level of Portuguese course for For-eigners of the University of Brasilia makes linguistic-discursive adjustments concerning the use of politeness strategies in the reader’s letter genre. Therefore, this research, affiliated with the studies of interactional sociolinguistics and (intercultural) pragmatic, is based on the concept of face and the theory of politeness as well as the notion of textual genres. After performing our methodological actions (reading and analyzing the reader’s letter, and producing this genre), we found that the research collaborator made appropriate use of politeness strategies, in line with Brazilian sociocultural conventions since, in general, equalized sincerity (necessary for the criticism) and politeness (necessary to watch over to the social image).

A produção textual na esfera acadêmica: desafios concernentes ao ato de dizer materializados em gêneros do discurso secundários

Este artigo discute desafios atinentes aos usos da escrita materializados em gêneros do discurso da esfera acadêmica, considerando a participação de graduandos do curso de Letras Português da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina na disciplina de Produção Textual. A fundamentação teórica articula concepções de língua, sujeito e texto ancoradas na ótica bakhtiniana, vigotskiana e do letramento (CERUTTI-RIZZATTI; MOSSMANN, IRIGOITE, 2013). Quanto à metodologia, caracteriza-se como estudo de caso tipo etnográfico (ANDRÉ, 2008). Sobre inteligibilidades, enfatiza-se a tensão da constituição dos participantes em relação às demandas acadêmicas para a produção textual, especialmente, quanto às especificidades intersubjetivas/intrassubjetivas do dizer acadêmico.Palavras-chave: Produção Textual Acadêmica. Esfera Acadêmica. Eventos e Práticas de Letramento. Simpósio Conceitual.

No princípio era o verbo: a cultura escolar e o ensino da língua vernácula no ensino secundário brasileiro (1759-1960)

O objetivo deste artigo é explicar as prescrições que forjaram a Cultura Escolar em torno do ensino da língua vernácula no ensino secundário brasileiro, através da análise histórica do processo de constituição da disciplina Português, que se inicia com a imposição do português como língua materna – 1759 – até o início do processo de democratização do ensino que vai modificá-la expressivamente – 1960. Veremos que o nascimento da disciplina está atrelado à constituição da nação brasileira e ao sentimento nacionalista, o que vai reverberar no modo de ver e pensar o ensino da língua vernácula até os dias de hoje.

Subjetividade e práticas discursivo-pedagógicas no ensino de Português Língua Estrangeira

The increasing demand for internationalization of university education in Brazil has motivated the writing of this article to propose possible effects on subjectivity stemming from some discursive pedagogical activities proposed in courses of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PLE). The guiding premise is that learning a foreign language establishes an encounter with another way of seeing (oneself in) the world, as well as a confrontation derived from the diversity in the nomination and discursivization in the target language. The analysis of the corpus is based on a discursive perspective affected by concepts of Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis. The analyzed activities indicate the denaturalization of the subject’s structure and belonging network, resulting in identitary ratification and instances of identification to the diversity of perspectives. Keywords: subjectivity, discourse, Portuguese as a Foreign Language.

The role of oral corrective feedback in L2 Portuguese classrooms

Languages are generally acquired along with and for others, in varied environments which influence second language (L2) learning. One of the most important influences of the linguistic environment is that it provides learners with information about the incorrectness of their utterances (ORTEGA, 2009). This process is referred as Corrective Feedback (LYSTER; RANTA, 1997, RUSSEL; SPADA, 2006), which is a complex phenomenon that has different functions in formal L2 instruction. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the types of oral CF in L2 Portuguese classrooms and to analyze how learners responded to CF provided by their teachers. The data presented were obtained from the observation of lessons in an elementary and an intermediate group of a Portuguese course offered at a private American university. The results of this observational study show that elicitation, explicit correction and metalinguistic feedback are the main CF methods employed by the teachers.

LANGUAGE SCHOOLS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDYING PROGRAMS IN PORTUGAL

The article is devoted to the description and characterizing of language schools and foreign language studying programs in Portugal. The relevance of language learning for professional, mobility, self-developing means is shown. The main courses and programs are observed and the advantages and disadvantages of each of them are given. It is stated that Portuguese courses mostly follow the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. A small synopsis of the abilities for each level is presented. Numerous language schools for foreigners to learn Portuguese (Iberlinguas, Languages Abroad, Amerispan, Nikitas Language Abroad School, Portuguese Connection Language School, Eurolingua Institute, CIAL Centro de Linguas, Apple Languages, Escola Europeia de Linguas (EEL), Fast Forward Language Institute, International House Portugal, Margarida’s School, Mundilingua) are described. It is pointed out that along with language courses Portugal also offers different language programs for people of all ages with various communicative needs. The description of budget, adventure, family and medical programs is given. The additional opportunities for foreigners learning Portuguese (surf classes, guided excursions and sightseeing, international parties, Fado nights, tile painting workshops, cooking classes) are shown. The private tuition advantages are presented. The free language studying with teachers’ volunteers is shown. The main advantages and disadvantages of this method of learning are emphasized. It is pointed out that the choice of any course and program should be made considering the following characteristics: place, intensity of the course, language level, purpose of studying and cost. The further investigation which can include the analysis of language courses and programs for Portuguese people, their pros and cons, main purposes of teaching foreign languages is mentioned.

Língua Portuguesa: formação docente e educação pré-escolar em contexto timorense

Desde o período da Administração Transitória das Nações Unidas em Timor-Leste diversos são os programas de cooperação do Brasil e de Portugal para a difusão e ensino da Língua Portuguesa (LP) naquele país. É o caso, por exemplo, do Programa de Qualificação Docente e Ensino de Língua Portuguesa em Timor-Leste, promovido pela Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior. Nesse sentido, na confluência das áreas de Educação (numa perspectiva freireana) e dos Estudos Lusófonos, após breve contextualização da situação da LP em Timor-Leste (no período colonial e durante o domínio indonésio), este artigo, com base em memoriais elaborados pelos participantes do Curso de Português Instrumental (CPI), inserido no Projeto de Ensino da Língua Portuguesa Instrumental, analisa alguns aspectos do trabalho realizado no âmbito desse Curso dirigido a professores da pré-escola de Díli. Destacam-se, aqui, a percepção dos educadores quanto à contribuição do CPI e às atividades propostas, visando tanto a fluência na expressão em português quanto, e principalmente, uma produtiva prática pedagógica e o processo de conscientização dos docentes em relação à necessidade do domínio da Língua Portuguesa.

Projetos de Letramento no Ensino Médio: novas perspectivas e desafios

Resumo: Este artigo discute as implicações das novas perspectivas do ensino e aprendizagem de língua materna, em especial o trabalho centrado em projetos que tomam a prática social e as demandas dos sujeitos como ponto de partida para as ações metodológicas, e se volta para a análise de um projeto de letramento realizado no Programa Institucional de Bolsa de Iniciação à Docência (PIBID) do curso de Letras Português da UFSC, que se deu por meio de uma pesquisa-ação (Thiollent, 2008) em uma turma de terceiro ano do Ensino Médio de uma escola pública. As conclusões levam a crer que a falta de engajamento dos alunos pode ter se dado em função da distinção entre práticas de letramento escolares e familiares, demandando ressignificações metodológicas na formulação de projetos de letramento.

Culturally sensitive social work: promoting cultural competence

In current times of great conflict and clashes between different cultures and worldviews, cultural competencies should be a well embedded feature of social work education. This is a fundamental and cross-cutting issue; however, we question whether it is an obvious concern in social work education in European countries, specifically in Portugal, and if the curriculum of social work courses covers this topic. This article is based on research that seeks to find out if there are mandatory curricular units of the disciplinary field of social work that explicitly address culturally sensitive social work and cultural competencies. Thus, this article presents a study that focuses on educational institutions that provide social work courses in Portugal, and has the potential to be extended to other countries. An online survey and a document analysis of the curriculum programmes of all Portuguese courses in social work were conducted. The study results revealed the lack of curricular units with clear terms relating to the topic of culturally sensitive social work. The implications for practice and educational policy are also discussed, which lead to a reflection and analysis of the evaluation and accreditation process of social work education in Portugal, with a conclusion that it is incomplete and faces major challenges in curriculum development and course accreditation. Challenges and opportunities in developing social work curricula, as well the debate around a generic or specialist social work education are also discussed. Finally, the authors suggest an opportunity to develop cultural competencies through continuing and lifelong learning for social workers.

Teaching Strategies in Portuguese as an Additional Language

We are pleased to present the second edition of BELT+ focused on Portuguese as an Additional Language, with the theme of this issue being Teaching Strategies. We continue to highlight the rise in interest in Portuguese as an Additional Language (PAL) in higher education institutions around the world. As mentioned in the 2014 (vol. 05, no. 2) edition, the Ministry of Education has been promoting its Languages without Borders Program1 (LwB) to prepare outgoing and incoming students participating in the Science without Borders Program2 (SwB) for the purposes of improving the quality of higher education and research programs in Brazil. LwB includes the offer of courses of Portuguese for Foreigners. These programs have led to increased scientific and academic mobility as well as international agreements between Brazilian and foreign institutions. Despite the economic and political challenges currently facing the country, the programs will still be in operation for the foreseeable future. Moreover, interest in Brazil and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) continues to climb with the creation of new Portuguese language programs around the world. Another initiative by the Brazilian government is the Rede Brasil Cultural3, launched in its current form in 2013, which promotes the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture abroad, similar to institutions such as Instituto Camoes for Portugal, Goethe-Institut for Germany and Instituto Cervantes for Spain.

A RELAÇÃO ENTRE PESQUISA E ENSINO: O QUADRO DE POSSESSIVOS DO PORTUGUÊS

O objetivo deste artigo é investigar a relação entre pesquisa e ensino, no que se refere aos rearranjos operados no quadro de possessivos, observando de que forma os estudos sociolinguísticos têm sido aplicados ao ensino de português através dos materiais didáticos elaborados para o Ensino Médio e para os cursos de português como língua estrangeira (PLE).