Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (Jun 2017)
Teaching Portuguese as a foreign / non-native language through a pluricentric and intercultural point of view
Abstract
The needs generated by the current context of the Portuguese projection have not been accompanied by a scientific production that expands at the same rate. The publishing of textbooks for Portuguese language teaching as a foreign and/or second language (PFL-PSL) has a gap concerning supplying the needs of learners to develop multiple competencies to establish meaningful relationships with people from other languages-cultures. Among the initiatives that have been developed to help teachers and learners of PFL-PSL, the online platform Portal do Professor de Português Língua Estrangeira/ Língua Não Materna (PPPLE) has a distinctive feature by offering teaching lessons that take into account the linguistic and cultural varieties of the Lusophone world. The Portal offers teaching units from five Portuguese-speaking countries so far: Angola, Brazil, East Timor, Mozambique and Portugal, reinforcing a view of Portuguese as a pluricentric language, shared by different countries and communities with specific rules for each context. This paper presents how teaching lessons are developed and discusses the articulation with theoretical and methodological principles that served as the foundation for the platform.
