English Portuguese Research Articles

A multimodal contrastive analysis of regulations and instructions during the COVID-19 lockdown in the context of the Island of Madeira and the United Kingdom

Abstract The paper analyses aspects of multilingual and multimodal narratives employed during the COVID-19 lockdown, attempting to identify how they were used in professional and public environments. More specifically, the paper looks at editing choices, photography, design, drawing, colour, and writing to get a better understanding of multimodal communication, semiotics, image analysis, and their correlation with the written text and the way it has been perceived and interpreted, be it in online or print-based contexts. Methodologically, this is a contrastively inspired research project, looking specifically at Portuguese-speaking contexts of the Island of Madeira and English-speaking contexts of the United Kingdom, taking into account instructions about the COVID-19 pandemic. These are mainly bilingual English–Portuguese and multilingual texts, multimodal manifestations, and communicative and semiotic effectiveness.

PACIS XXI: Aligning English language curriculum with the CEFR/CV for 21st century learning

"This article aims to outline and describe how the PACIS XXI team (Projetar a Área Curricular de Inglês para o Século XXI), nominated by the Azorean Regional Government’s Secretary of Education in 2017, designed and promoted the implementation of the CEFR-based English curriculum guidelines. Its acronym, which translated means to launch English as a curriculum component into the 21st century, states the essence of what the team was mandated to do. The key mission was to analyse the state of English language teaching, learning and assessment and design a curriculum document to sustain English language education at the primary level in the Azores, Portugal. In July 2022, the guidelines, Orientações Curriculares de Inglês dos 1.º e 2.º ciclos do ensino básico (OCI), were published. First, we delved into the CEFR/CV with New Descriptors (Council of Europe [COE] 2018), then later, while the guidelines were up for public discussion as a working document, between 2019 and 2022, we enhanced them using the final version of the CEFR/CV (COE 2020). Aligning curriculum guidelines with the CEFR/CV meant not only aligning proficiency levels for different grades, but also looking closely at what it means to take an action-oriented approach to language learning. Hence the need to move forward into designing descriptors for communicative activities, and not for the traditional four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. We presented planning and assessment tools and templates aligned with an action-oriented approach, incorporating the Understanding by Design/Backwards Theory (Wiggins and McTighe 2005). We also looked at pedagogical assessment, where formative assessment is key, as put forward by Dylan Wiliam (2011) as well as the conceptual framework shared by the Projeto MAIA through the Portuguese educational system. Over a hundred teachers in thirty schools were involved. Various types of training were developed, based on the curriculum guidelines, as well as needs expressed by teachers. All this work was not only validated by policymakers, but also by APPI (Associação Portuguesa de Professores de Inglês), the Portuguese English teachers’ association who thoroughly revised the guidelines. In sharing this experience, we hope to lend some insight into how the CEFR/CV can be used and adapted for curriculum design and can enhance teaching, learning and assessment. "

Love me in L1, but hate me in L2: How native speakers and bilinguals rate the affectivity of words when feeling or thinking about them

AbstractThis study examines the distinction between knowing the meaning of a word and experiencing the feelings associated with it. We collected affective ratings for a set of emotional and neutral English words from a group of English native speakers and a group of European Portuguese–English bilinguals. Half of the emotional words named emotions (emotion words) and the other half did not name emotions but could provoke them (emotion-laden words). Some participants were asked to focus on the meaning of words while others were asked to focus on the feeling produced by the words. Native speakers of English produced more intense affective ratings that Portuguese–English bilinguals. Such difference was larger when participants focused on their feelings than when they focused on the words’ meaning. Accordingly, such distinction should be considered in the study of bilingual affective language processing. Finally, the type of emotional word (emotion vs. emotion-laden) had only modest effects.

Cognate and meaning frequency effects on homonym processing

Purpose: This study investigated the influence of L1 co-activation and meaning frequency of homonyms on L2 lexical access of Brazilian Portuguese–English bilinguals during an L2 meaning decision task. Design: Eighty-four university students completed a meaning decision task—with cognate homonyms—a meaning recognition task, a Language History Questionnaire, and an L2 proficiency test. The meaning decision task was composed of 128 prime words followed by one out of three possible targets: related to the dominant meaning, related to the subordinate one, or unrelated. Independent variables were cognate status (64 cognate × 64 non-cognate words), homonym status (64 homonym × 64 non-homonyms), prime-sharedness (16 dominant meaning shared words × 16 subordinate meaning shared words), and target-relatedness (64 related to dominant meaning × 64 related to subordinate meaning × 64 unrelated words). Dependent variables were reaction times and accuracy. Data and analysis: Data were analyzed using linear mixed effect models in R. Findings: Results showed that, in this sample of bilinguals, processing of target words related to the meaning of the prime was confounded when primes were homonyms. In general, this interference was not decreased by the co-activation of cognate words across languages. Accuracy scores benefited from cognate status only when no ambiguity was present. Word processing was faster and more accurate when target words were related to the dominant meaning of the homonym prime, which shared this same meaning across languages. Originality: L1 co-activation via cognate words was not enough to decrease homonym interference effect in L2 word processing. Implications: This study lends support for a non-selective bilingual lexical access view and for frequency approaches during L2 word recognition. It also indicates limitations of the cognate facilitation effect.

Breaking nation: Brazilian transnational children’s construction of belonging in bilingual classrooms

This article explores Brazilian children’s belonging-making in Portuguese–English bilingual classrooms in the United States. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over fifteen months, we found that the participating Brazilian children frequently referenced Brazil in their classrooms. Through these references, the children forged their own conceptions of what belonging means and created spaces of belonging in their bilingual classrooms. Connections to Brazil were established through the evocation of memories, allusions to loved ones physically there, and by claiming identities as Portuguese speakers. We argue that the children’s actions and narratives had the effect of disrupting the tenets of traditional nations: common culture, territory, and language.

Dieta cetogênica para pacientes com diabetes mellitus tipo II

A diabetes mellitus tipo II em pleno século XXI é um dos maiores problema de saúde pública, que atinge grande parte da população e é a forma de maior predominância no mundo e correspondendo a cerca de 90% de todos os casos de diabetes, disfunção de uma epidemia crescente de pais desenvolvido e em desenvolvimento. Observou-se que a sua causa está relacionada principalmente com problemas de obesidade e que a perda de peso favorece ao tratamento. Com isso, a inclusão de uma dieta e a modificação no estilo vida pode contribuir de maneira positiva para uma melhora dos portadores dessa doença. A partir disso, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo realizar uma revisão integrativa sobre a influência da dieta cetogênica como auxilio no tratamento da diabetes mellitus tipo II e compreender tal manejo que possa contribuir para o individuo diabético. Trata-se de uma revisão integrativa, sendo utilizado como método de coleta de dados, com pesquisas em período publicado nas bases de dados: Scielo, Pubmed, Capes e órgão relevantes da área. Foram selecionados artigos de 2011 a Outubro de 2019 em português espanhol e inglês encontrados em resumos e textos completos. Por meio desse estudo conclui-se que a dieta cetogênica apresenta uma redução de massa corporal auxilia na redução da resistência a insulina melhora os níveis de glicose plasmática e consequentemente contribui para a redução da diabetes mellitus tipo II.

ELF-AWARENESS AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ELT POLICIES IN PORTUGAL

<span lang="EN-US">This study attempts to examine to what extent the concepts of Intercultural Communicative Competence and English as a Lingua Franca are theoretically and practically formulated in some of the most recently implemented European and Portuguese English language teaching documents and, if so, how they are framed to be put into practice in the English language classroom. Overall, the documents analyzed—the <em>Common European Framework of Reference for Languages</em> (2001), the <em>CEFR Companion Volume with New Descriptors </em>(2018), both published by the Council of Europe, and the <em>Essential Learnings</em> (2018), introduced by the Portuguese Ministry of Education—display traditional approaches to the development of intercultural (communicative) competence in the English language classroom failing to truly and consistently represent the current role of English as an international lingua franca.</span>

Teaching Bilingual Learners: Effects of a Language‐Based Reading Intervention on Academic Language and Reading Comprehension in Grades 4 and 5

AbstractStudents are expected to comprehend and produce increasingly complex texts in upper elementary school, and academic language and literacy skills are considered critical to meeting these expectations. Notions of academic language are also controversial and require careful deliberation when applied to traditionally minoritized populations, including bilingual learners who negotiate more than one language in their daily lives and have varied linguistic repertoires. In the present study, the authors report on a quasi‐experimental field trial of a theoretically grounded and language‐based reading intervention framed around language components (semantics, syntax, and morphology), language functions, discussion, and reading comprehension. A sample of 239 Portuguese–English and Spanish–English bilingual students in grades 4 and 5 worked in small instructional groups to explore language, apply reading strategies, and discuss and write about big ideas in text. Half of the students were assigned to the intervention group (n = 119) and the other half (n = 120) to a business‐as‐usual control group. Classroom teachers (n = 12) and specialists (n = 10) implemented the intervention with small groups of four to six students. Results showed practically meaningful effects of the intervention on standardized measures of both academic language (Hedges’s g = 0.248) and reading comprehension (Hedges’s g = 0.166), with implications for theory, research, and classroom practice.

A tradução na área de química orgânica: da adaptação à tradução literal

Neste trabalho, propomos uma discussão sobre a problemática da tradução de termos em inglês da Química de Pesticidas, subárea da Química Orgânica, para o português do Brasil. O objetivo principal é o de apresentar um glossário bilíngue (português <=> inglês) com termos harmonizados, buscando preencher uma lacuna existente e oferecer uma fonte de consulta confiável para os pesquisadores da área. Para tal, utilizamos como base teórica os estudos da tradução baseados em corpus, a Linguística de Corpus e a Terminologia. Para a composição do corpus, de onde serão extraídas as informações e os termos, são utilizados artigos e resumos de revistas acadêmicas que tratam de química de pesticidas em português brasileiro e em inglês.

Remembering Professor R. C. Willis (1934–2014)

Portuguese Studies vol. 31 no. 1 (2015), 132–34© Modern Humanities Research Association 2015 Remembering Professor R. C. Willis (1934–2014) Amélia P. Hutchinson Director of the Fernão Lopes Translation Project, University of Georgia, USA It is difficult to think of anyone whose name is as closely connected with Portuguese Studies as R. C. Willis, Emeritus Professor of the University of Manchester. It can be said that, despite being close to celebrating his eightieth birthday, Clive (as he was known to his friends and colleagues) was indeed taken too soon from this world and from his life-long ‘love-affair’ with all things Portuguese. Nearly a year has passed since his death on 18 April 2014, but he is still dearly remembered and very sorely missed by his family, friends and colleagues, especially those who continue to work on his last project, the full English translation of the fifteenth-century Portuguese chronicles of Fernão Lopes. Clive dedicated fifty-eight years of his life to the study and dissemination of Portuguese Language, Linguistics and Literature. His career as a Portuguese academic began with his appointment as Assistant Lecturer of Portuguese at the University of Manchester, in 1956, aged only twenty-two, having just completed his degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Modern Languages at the University of Cambridge. In 1960, the year he took his Master of Arts at Cambridge, Clive also published his first work on Portuguese language, the Langenscheidt’s English–Portuguese and Portuguese–English Dictionary (Berlin: Langenscheidts Verlagsbuch­ handlung; London: Methuen, 1960). Five years later, the publication of his descriptive grammar and exercise book An Essential Course in Modern Portu­ guese (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1965) came as a godsend, since at that time there were few materials to aid the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a foreign language. With several reprints between 1965 and 1974 and a revised second edition in 1971, An Essential Course in Modern Portuguese established R. C. Willis and his manual as the faithful companions of generations of students of Portuguese, as the volume became a requirement in most British universities and abroad; even now, it inspires teachers and learners alike. In addition to this experience as a teacher of the language, Clive’s close involvement in Portuguese public examinations began in the 1950s when he became the sole examiner for Portuguese O and A Levels, and continued until 2013 when he retired as the Reviser for the GCSE and A Level papers for OCR. Robust and fearless in Obituary: R. C. Willis 133 demanding high standards, Clive was always held in great esteem by all the examiners and others who worked with him over the years for his knowledge of the Portuguese language and culture as well as for his bonhomie. Clive had a wide range of teaching and research interests. He was a meticulous scholar, an invaluable quality in a dialectologist who possessed a knowledge of the various Iberian languages and dialects second to none. This bore immediate fruit in his first publications dedicated to the Portuguese language, and in his classes in Iberian Dialectology at the University of Manchester. Besides producing several English–Portuguese, Portuguese–English dictionaries, he became a pioneer of modern technology in the Humanities when in the early 1980s Cassells contracted him to direct the compilation of a Portuguese–English dictionary, which happened to be the first to make use of a computer database. In addition, Clive’s wide intellectual and linguistic range made him a reviewer of distinction. In over fifty reviews, as in all areas of his academic life, he gave unstintingly of his time and expertise. Clive’s career as a respected specialist in Luis Vaz de Camões, the sixteenthcentury epic and lyric poet, culminated in his last major work, Camões, Prince of Poets, ed. by Nigel H. Griffin (Bristol: Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, University of Bristol, 2010). His exceptional command of Portuguese, associated with his in-depth knowledge of his native English, made him an outstanding translator, as witnessed by his superb English renditions of Camões’s poems and letters from Ceuta, Lisbon and Goa in his article ‘The Correspondence...

The English phonological awareness skills of 5;0–6;0-year-old Polish–English, Portuguese–English bilingual speakers and English monolingual children

Previous research on bilingual children's phonological awareness (PA) abilities is contradictory. Some studies suggest that bilinguals are advantaged compared to monolinguals, benefiting literacy acquisition. Other research indicates that any advantage in PA skills is transient, influenced by language learning context, proficiency in both languages, and the language pair being acquired. This study compared the English PA skills of two groups of bilingual children and a monolingual English-speaking group matched for age, gender, and social class. The 54 participants were 5 to 6 years old, in their first or second year of school. There were 18 children speaking Polish–English, 18 children speaking Portuguese–English and 18 English-speaking monolingual children. Their letter knowledge, syllable, onset–rime, and phoneme awareness were assessed using subtests from standardized assessments plus one task specifically designed for this study. Parents of bilingual children completed a questionnaire about their child's language background and language use. The three groups did not differ on tasks assessing syllable awareness, identification of word initial sounds or letter knowledge. The results of tasks assessing alliteration, rhyme, and phoneme awareness indicated that typically developing English-speaking monolingual children performed better than matched typically developing bilingual children. The monolinguals and the Polish-English bilinguals performed equally well on the rhyme detection task. The language use questionnaire responses provided insight into factors affecting the results. It was concluded that no bilingual advantage for PA was apparent in the bilingual populations studied. These results suggest that bilingual children are likely to initially find English literacy difficult.

The interplay of phonology and orthography in visual cognate word recognition: An ERP study

This study examined the role of phonological and orthographic overlap in the recognition of cognate words by recording electrophysiological and behavioral data. One hundred and ninety-two words were selected: 96 cognate words listed according to their phonological and orthographic overlap vs. 96 noncognate words. Twenty-four proficient European Portuguese–English bilinguals performed a silent reading task with a masked priming paradigm. The results showed that phonology interacts with semantic activation at N400 modulations. Phonological priming effects were dependent on the orthographic overlap of cognate words. Thus, the distinctive processing of cognate words seems to be due to their cross-linguistic similarity, which is consistent with a localist connectionist account on cognate representation and processing.

Translator-oriented, corpus-driven technical glossaries: the case of cooking terms

Although there are many English–Portuguese technical glossaries on the market, very few are designed to meet the specific needs of translators, whose main task is the production of an idiomatic text either in the mother tongue or in the foreign language. For that purpose, a mere list of monolexical terms (usually based on previous compilations or abstract conceptual schemata, and their equivalents) will not suffice. Most importantly, the producer of a text needs to know how a word is used in context, and this can be inferred from the observation of authentic examples. Corpus Linguistics has proved to be an invaluable tool in retrieving technical terms and phraseologies from corpora. In this paper, we employ a corpus-based methodology or, more precisely, the ‘corpus-driven approach’, to compile a bilingual, monodirectional English–Portuguese glossary of cooking terms ( Teixeira and Tagnin, 2008 ), covering the various stages of the project, with an emphasis on the identification of candidate terms, and their subsequent validation through the generation of frequency and keyword lists using the lexical analysis software, WordSmith Tools.

Translator-oriented, corpus-driven technical glossaries: the case of cooking terms

Although there are many English–Portuguese technical glossaries on the market, very few are designed to meet the specific needs of translators, whose main task is the production of an idiomatic text either in the mother tongue or in the foreign language. For that purpose, a mere list of monolexical terms (usually based on previous compilations or abstract conceptual schemata, and their equivalents) will not suffice. Most importantly, the producer of a text needs to know how a word is used in context, and this can be inferred from the observation of authentic examples. Corpus Linguistics has proved to be an invaluable tool in retrieving technical terms and phraseologies from corpora. In this paper, we employ a corpus-based methodology or, more precisely, the ‘corpus-driven approach’, to compile a bilingual, monodirectional English–Portuguese glossary of cooking terms (Teixeira and Tagnin, 2008), covering the various stages of the project, with an emphasis on the identification of candidate terms, and their subsequent validation through the generation of frequency and keyword lists using the lexical analysis software, WordSmith Tools.

Conhecimento sobre uso de fluoretos em saúde bucal coletiva entre coordenadores municipais de saúde bucal do Estado de Santa Catarina, Brasil

Abstract in published English and Portuguese English title: Knowledge about the use of fluoride in community dentistry among municipal oral health authorities of Santa Catarina State, Brazil

Orthographic context sensitivity in vowel decoding by Portuguese monolingual and Portuguese–English bilingual children

This study examines the pronunciation of the first vowel in decoding disyllabic pseudowords derived from Portuguese words. Participants were 96 Portuguese monolinguals and 52 Portuguese–English bilinguals of equivalent Portuguese reading levels. The results indicate that sensitivity to vowel context emerges early, both in monolinguals and in bilinguals. However, bilinguals, unlike monolinguals, appear to use this knowledge consistently from the first grade. Moreover, the effect of context was stronger in bilinguals than in monolinguals. Apparently, bilinguals benefited from an earlier acquisition of reading principles regarding the use of orthographic context derived from their more frequent use of large patterns to read vowels. Because the Portuguese orthography is considered to be of intermediate consistency, it demands the development of decoding mechanisms that entail units larger than graphemes. English orthography, being more inconsistent, confers bilinguals with an asset to deal with complex structures. Additionally, the data suggest that those patterns appear to be not at the level of the syllable.

Using metrics from complex networks to evaluate machine translation

Establishing metrics to assess machine translation (MT) systems automatically is now crucial owing to the widespread use of MT over the web. In this study we show that such evaluation can be done by modeling text as complex networks. Specifically, we extend our previous work by employing additional metrics of complex networks, whose results were used as input for machine learning methods and allowed MT texts of distinct qualities to be distinguished. Also shown is that the node-to-node mapping between source and target texts (English–Portuguese and Spanish–Portuguese pairs) can be improved by adding further hierarchical levels for the metrics out-degree, in-degree, hierarchical common degree, cluster coefficient, inter-ring degree, intra-ring degree and convergence ratio. The results presented here amount to a proof-of-principle that the possible capturing of a wider context with the hierarchical levels may be combined with machine learning methods to yield an approach for assessing the quality of MT systems.

Can one‐parent families or divorced families produce two‐language children? An investigation into how Portuguese–English bilingual children acquire biliteracy within diverse family structures

This article examines the emergence of biliteracy in school‐aged Portuguese–English bilingual children growing up within diverse family structures in Portugal. The ethnographic research investigated the premise that some children have the opportunity to acquire biliteracy, like their bilingualism, in naturalistic contexts. There are gaps in bilingual studies on the issue of what happens when a single parent or non‐residential parent is the focus for support of the minority language, but must also be supportive of the language and culture of the country the children are growing up in, if both languages are to be viewed in a positive light. Previous research has either ignored bilingual children growing up in diverse family structures, or presented these families negatively in terms of children developing biliteracy. My research contradicts these views and shows that single parents are able to promote both languages in the home due to the cross‐cultural experiences of the child in the home/community and sibling literacies. A non‐residential parent, who is actively involved with a child’s language development, is also able to promote biliteracy in naturalistic settings.

How do siblings shape the language environment in bilingual families?

This article investigates the home literacy practices of Portuguese–English bilingual children raised in Portugal. The ethnographic research was inspired by experience with bilingual families, whose children were all of school age, so acquisition of literacy in English as the non-school language had surfaced as an issue. The research opens up new ground on exactly how siblings shift the language balance in the home and build bridges or barriers to language acquisition. The research explores whether parents are able to promote both languages in the home due to the cross-cultural experiences of siblings in the home and community and whether there are additional issues where there is a single parent with the minority language. My research findings demonstrate that in the Portuguese–English bilingual families there may be conflicts due to the arrival of a younger sibling and a language shift towards Portuguese, or older siblings may act as mediators of both languages in the home and support the younger sibling's emerging biliteracy. My research indicates that shared sibling support needs to be learnt, encouraged and supported in home literacy practices, rather than parents expecting such support to appear naturally.

Word-final stops in Brazilian Portuguese English: acquisition and pronunciation instruction

This paper presents current research on the second language acquisition of English phonology and its implication for (and applications to) pronunciation instruction in the language classroom. More specifically, the paper follows the development of English word-final consonants by Brazilian Portuguese speakers learning English as a foreign language. The findings of two parallel studies reveal that the acquisition of these constituents is motivated by both extralinguistic (proficiency, style) and linguistic (word size, place of articulation) factors, and that the process is mediated by an intermediate stage characterized by consonant lengthening or aspiration (Onset-Nucleus sharing). Based on these results, I propose that the segments and environments that seem to delay coda production (i.e., monosyllabic words, labial and dorsal consonants) should be given priority in pronunciation instruction. Along the lines of Dickerson (1975), this paper proposes (what we believe is) a more effective and socially realistic pedagogy for the teaching of English pronunciation within an approach that recognizes that variability is the norm rather than the exception in second language acquisition.