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Internationalization of Higher Education: The strategic role of Portuguese in multilingual educational contexts
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
09:00 - 10:30
Salas 5-6-7
Chair: Livia Reis, UFF
Internationalization of Higher Education: The strategic role of Portuguese in multilingual educational contexts
Margarete Schlatter (UFRGS)
Recent efforts by Brazilian universities in building an international ethos and the growing influx of international students and researchers have caused Portuguese as an Additional Language to grow into an institutionally recognized academic field. This paper presents the Portuguese as an Additional Language Center (PALC) that has been developed at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul as a result of a steady influx of international students, starting in the 1980s and increasing substantially in the 2000s (mainly from East Asian, African, Caribbean and Latin American nations). Analysis of courses and academic projects aimed at PAL learning, teacher education, materials design and language proficiency exams shows how the PALC has developed into the hub for international cooperation and mobility.