Abstract

Spoken by over 244 million people in five continents, Portuguese is the official language of eight countries: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe. Naturally, there is a great deal of linguistic variation in Portuguese the same way we find variation within English. Yet, this has not impeded English as a Foreign Language to spread, in fact, to dominate as a global language (possibly aided by the “World English” approach in the classroom).

This workshop seeks to bring together linguists and language teachers to discuss the linguistic variation between European and Brazilian Portuguese and how this variation should be taught and/or represented in the classroom. The focus will be on the following questions:

• Should Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese be taught as two different languages, two different dialects, or two different registers? • How viable is a pluricentric teaching model in the classroom? • What is the international experience and practice of bidialectal classrooms? • What happens when the grammatical configuration of the L1 – which is English in the context of our workshop – is closer to the grammatical settings of one of the two varieties? Should this be exploited more even at the possible detriment of the other variety? • How teachers’ perceptions of bilinguals and bidialectals affect the teaching of PLE (Português Língua Estrangeira)? • What are the sociolinguistic implications of teaching PLE via the nonstandard/less prestigious variety?

Organisers: Dr Ioanna Sitaridou, Felipe Schuery, Aretousa Giannakou

Programme

11.00-11.30 Welcome coffee and registration

11.30-11.50 Diglossia, Bidialectalism or Bilingualism? The challenges of teaching Portuguese Dr Ioanna Sitaridou & Aretousa Giannakou – University of Cambridge

11.50-12.10 The variants of Portuguese in the classroom: a pluricentric approach? Felipe Schuery – University of Cambridge

12.10-12.30 Bidialectalism in the classroom: The Cypriot Greek case Prof. Stavroula Tsiplakou – Open University of Cyprus

12.30-14.00 Lunch break

14.00-14.45 Portuguese as a foreign language in the classroom: challenges and perspectives Prof. Matilde V. R. Scaramucci – Universidade de Campinas

14.45-15.15 Coffee Break

15.15-16.00 Language policy, language diversity and language teaching: a matter of awareness Prof. João Costa – Universidade Nova de Lisboa Secretário de Estado da Educação

16.00-16.30 Questions, concluding remarks and closure of event

16.30-17.00 Wine Reception