Transcript Slide 1

The Teaching of Portuguese as a Second Language to
Eastern European Immigrants: Systemic and
Methodological Questions
Language and the Future of Europe: Ideologies, Policies, and Practices
University of Southampton
8-10 July 2004
Ana Maria Raposo Preto-Bay
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
Background to the Study
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The decentralization of the Portuguese school system is now, by
decree of law, the fundamental aspect of its organization and
management.
That same decree, 115-A/98, states that all students are guaranteed
“the existence of activities which pedagogically support and
complement, in a clearly differentiated manner, students with
specific educational needs.”
Published data places the number of immigrants in Portugal at
anywhere from 300,000 to 450,000. Of these, immigrants from
Eastern Europe constitute an ever growing number.
Many of these immigrants come alone, but many come with their
families, including school-age children who need to be integrated in
the Portuguese school system.
Characteristics of K-12 Portuguese
Educational System
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Pedagogical and administrative cohorts of schools
Local management of resources
Flexible management of the curriculum according to the guidelines given
by the department of education
An executive council made up of teachers runs the school
Except for minor ones, decisions must be approved by the regional office
of the Ministry of Education.
System is fairly rigid, hierarchical, and slow to give responses to proposals
and/or provide solutions to problems.
No educational legislation contemplates PL2 student needs.
Other than a special education teacher per school and some extra hours
assigned to some teachers to support students with special academic and
emotional needs, schools have received no guidelines or help on how to
deal with immigrant students’ linguistic and overall adaptation needs.
There is no articulated language acquisition policy, curriculum, training or
materials.
School Integration Process
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By law, immigrant student records are reviewed and students are
given equivalence to a grade in the Portuguese school system.
On the basis of that equivalence, students are integrated into a
regular class of study whenever they arrive.
Lack of Portuguese language proficiency is not a factor in these
students’ placement.
Once non-Portuguese speaking students are admitted to a school, it
is then the responsibility of the executive and pedagogical councils
of the school to decide how to best help each student.
In compliance with the law, teachers with “incomplete” schedules
are placed in academic support situations to help students with a
variety of needs, one of which is not speaking Portuguese.
Some Characteristics of Eastern European
Immigrants and their Children
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In most cases, parents have high levels of formal education.
Older children have strong first language literacy backgrounds.
Parents tend to be very supportive of their children’s education and
expect excellence from them.
Both parents and children have strong work and study ethics.
They choose to live where they find work or in affordable housing
areas with no tendency for ethnic or country-based ghettos.
Fairly easily integrated into the community at large.
Starting to feel a bit of xenophobia from nationals who feel
immigrants are taking Portuguese people’s jobs away.
Study Data
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K-12 schools in the two districts with the highest concentration of
immigrants from Eastern Europe: Lisbon and Setúbal (According to the
published data from the 1999-2000 school year).
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Data from 76 schools in those two main geographical areas
corresponding to 16,200 students.
Interviews carried out on site in 14 schools. The rest of the data
comes from phone interviews with the main school and headquarters
of the cohort.
School with the most immigrant students: 84=12% of student body
Average number of immigrant students per school: 9
Teachers and executive council administrators were interviewed.
Quantitative and qualitative data gathered.
Central Lisbon
Escola Nuno Gonçalves—Grade 5 through 9
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815 students from lower middle and middle class.
84 international students from 22 countries.
18 students presently being taught from level zero.
Portuguese as a Second Language (PL2) is a school project.
PL2 classes are taught twice a week by Portuguese teachers, all except one
with no second language teaching experience or second language acquisition
background.
One of the teachers taught PL2 in Guinea for 8 years and in Spain for 4. She
teaches some of the PL2 students but has no prominence in decision making
and no real contact with Portuguese teachers in charge of teaching the
majority of the students. She has lots of materials she developed and which
only she uses. She would love to teach only PL2 but doesn’t dare to make the
suggestion to the executive council of the school.
School runs two-hours-per-week language workshops (English, French,
Portuguese) as an extra curricular activity for any student—native or
otherwise—who would like extra practice.
Student performance in the first year is made quantitatively on the basis of the
student’s attendance, participation, language gains in PL2, effort and
motivation. Most students pass the year with this assessment system.
Lisbon Suburbs
Escola Luís de Camões—Grades 5 through 9
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450 students from middle and upper middle class
24 students learning Portuguese as a second language
4 students learning Portuguese as a second language from level zero
The President of the executive council lived in Luxembourg for 16 years where
she worked with the children of Portuguese immigrants.
Students coming in with no Portuguese proficiency are all individually
considered and usually progressively integrated through a three-phase process:
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First Semester: They are taught a semi-intensive course in Portuguese with
as many contact hours as possible and integrated into a few classes they can
manage content-wise such as Math, Art, Physical Education, or Music.
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Second Semester: Students’ proficiency is assessed and more classes are
added to their schedule.
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Third Semester: Students start taking all classes. Most conclude the year
with passing grades in all or the large majority of their classes.
This process was proposed to the Ministry of Education and was turned down.
The school decided to go against that directive and, risking a reprimand, carried
it out anyway.
This school makes full use of retired teachers who volunteer to help teach
international students.
Feijó—Setúbal District
Escola Romeu Correia—Grade 7 through 12
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520 students from lower middle, middle and upper middle class.
47 international students, primarily from African countries in which
Portuguese is the official language.
2 students learning Portuguese as a second language from level zero.
The Ministry’s suggestion that immigrant students be taught Portuguese in a
supplemental model of up to two sessions of 90 minutes each is not working.
There are too many Portuguese students with need for academic support and
Eastern European students, who traditionally have no learning special needs
other than the language, must wait their turn in line.
Depending on the number of hours available, teachers may be able to teach
the international students or not.
The school has adopted the concept of a study hall where students with any
sort of academic need can come to get help from teachers there to help.
Unfortunately, the open hours on teachers’ schedules correspond to the hours
at which most students are in other classes.
The school psychologist is the person most involved with the issue of
international students in the school.
Other stakeholders in the PL2 process
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Faculty and students of at least three Universities which offer degrees in
applied Portuguese linguistics but who have no professional recognition in
the K-12 system.
Parent organizations within the school have no immigrant parent
representatives. Immigrant parents don’t really understand the system, and
they, themselves, are learning the language as well.
Publishing houses which insist Portuguese learning materials such as student
workbooks are technical products because if they hand out a desk copy to a
teacher in a school, they will never again sell a copy to that school—the
teacher will just use it to make copies. No Portuguese dictionaries in most of
the languages these students speak.
People working at the Ministry are involved in a big project dealing with the
teaching of PL2 in k-12 schools abroad and have little to no knowledge or
involvement in what is happening in the schools in Portugal.
Portugal
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Portugal seems to fall into the category of “homogeneous (or
monolingual) countries [which] assume that issues of status planning
have already been decided. They put a great deal of emphasis on
normative corpus planning, pay some attention to acquisition
planning, and are sometimes motivated to develop a diffusion policy.
(Lambert, 1988 quoted in Spolsky and Shohamy p. 27)
Language Policy
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“Successful language policy involves charting a feasible route from
the existing general language practice to the desired practice, taking
into account existing users and their willingness to modify their
repertoire. A language policy may attempt to mandate the status of a
language, its form or corpus, its acquisition or teaching within a
country, or its diffusion to other countries. . . . A policy concerning
language acquisition or education sets requirements, situations, or
opportunities for learning a desired or required variety of a
language.”
Spolsky and Shohamy, p. 10
Proposed Solutions
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Magnet schools for second language students within each
cohort or across cohorts.
Approval of a PL2 teacher career track in the K-12
system.
A clearly articulated curriculum for PL2 in the schools.
A PL2 specialist-coordinator within each school cohort.
Stronger teacher education in language acquisition for
teachers already working with immigrant students.
Intensive PL2 classes for students in the first semester
with gradual integration into content classes.
Better use of resources—more students from a variety of
language backgrounds in a larger class.