The increase in the number of Brazilian emigrants in the last thirty or so years has led to the development of the teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as a community language abroad. In other words, this type of teaching is new and, consequently, the teachers working in community schools tend to have been trained only to work with monolingual pupils in Brazil. In this article, we reflect on the experience of one of these teachers and who works with intermediate and upper-intermediate pupils aged 11 to 15 in London. The class that caters for this group of learners was initially created with the aim of preparing them to take mainstream examinations, i.e. GCSE and A-levels in Portuguese. In this article, we describe the contextual background for these lessons and contrast it to the teacher’s expectations of teaching in this context. We then consider the few teaching courses available for teachers of Portuguese as a community language in London. Anderson’s (2008) perceived 8-strand professional development needs of community language teachers are used as a framework for analysing the experience of this Brazilian teacher. We acknowledge the positive impact of these courses on teacher knowledge and practices and call for more of these initiatives.
Souza, AnaDorneles, R
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\School of Education
Year of publication: 2016Date of RADAR deposit: 2016-09-06