UC team creates Portuguese language course to support the integration of migrants and refugees
The course "One step further" is available in Portuguese, but also in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, and provides several activities to practise oral communication in everyday situations.
English version: Diana Taborda
A team from the University of Coimbra (UC) has developed a Portuguese language course focused on everyday verbal interaction, as part of the European project "INCLUDEED" (Social cohesion and INCLUsion: DEveloping the EDucational possibilities of the European Multilingual Heritage through Applied Linguistics), whose main objective is the integration of immigrant and refugee through language.
Cristina Martins, professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra (FLUC) and coordinator of the "INCLUDEED" UC team, explains that "anyone who learns a non-native language needs to assimilate linguistic structures, of course, but they also need to internalise the rules of socially appropriate use of these structures, i.e. they need to develop pragmatic competence. This competence is crucial to avoid miscommunication, misunderstandings and conflicts in everyday life. For example, there are many different ways of asking for something in European Portuguese, but some are much more polite than others. Thus, there are certain linguistic structures that identify courtesy in our community and to which non-native Portuguese language learners need to be made aware. It is this kind of knowledge that we intend to convey in this course".
The online autonomous course “Um passo adiante / One step further”, is available in Portuguese, but also in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Consisting of four units, it provides several activities and exercises to practise verbal communication, with videos representing everyday communication situations.
The course includes two other parts: one about the pragmatic content of the linguistic expressions presented in the videos and another about diverse socio-cultural information, namely on non-verbal and verbal behaviour to be considered in different social interaction situations. The course is free and is available online at https://includeed.usal.es/course/um-passo-adiante/.
The "INCLUDEED" project is funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ Programme and involves teams from the universities of Salamanca (Spain), Bologna (Italy), Coimbra, Heidelberg (Germany), Poitiers (France) and Trinity College Dublin (Republic of Ireland). It also has the collaboration of several non-governmental organisations dedicated to the reception and integration of migrants and refugees (such as the Red Cross, ACCEM, the CEPAIM Foundation and the Sierra-Pambley Foundation), which helped to identify existing problems and the convergence of different approaches.
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