Michael Katz, Dean of the Language Schools and Schools Abroad at Middlebury College announces that the Portuguese School has received an award of $ 128,507.00 from the NEH. The grant will facilitate the development and testing of Portuguese Language materials based on lectures and discussions held at the Portuguese School's inaugural year in the summer of 2003.
"Learning Language Through Cultural Texts: Brazilian Portuguese"
The project focuses on an unique opportunity to:
1. provide students in Portuguese language classes with historical and cultural contexts that have helped shape contemporary Brazil;
2. align all materials with the Standards for Learning Languages in the 21st Century, a document developed by a collaborative of professional language organizations outlining the need to integrate language curricula;
3. develop materials that can be incorporated into existing college-level Portuguese language curricula;
4. test the adaptability of these resources in different Portuguese language programs throughout the country.
Project team will build on materials developed during the 2003 session of the Portuguese school, when students were given extensive reading of cultural texts (both print and filmic) from the beginning levels through the highest levels of Portuguese language instruction. To facilitate both the reading of these texts and the listening to the presentations by scholars, diplomats, business people, musicians, and literary figures, Middlebury Portuguese School faculty presented historical and cultural background, phonetics exercises, vocabulary building exercises, and writing practice. The readings, based on the presentations, provide the central contemporary texts to be anchored on the classical cultural tradition that has helped shape contemporary Brazil. Experts in language, literature, and Brazilian studies from ten different institutions will work with the Middlebury College Interdisciplinary Team in reviewing materials and adapting them to the context of their own institutions. The project team will assemble at Middlebury College in August 2004 to establish the final work plan for the year.
Middlebury College Interdisciplinary Team:
Carmen Chaves Tesser, Project Director (Director, Middlebury Portuguese School and Professor of Romance Languages, University of Georgia); Jeff Cason, Associate Professor of Political Science; Darién Davis, Associate Professor of History
Reading Activity Developers:
Regina Santos (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Alessandra Pires (University of Georgia)
Consultants:
Marta Almeida, Yale University
Milton Azevedo, University of California, Berkeley
Ana Carvalho, University of Arizona
Tony Cowles, Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania
Naomi Moniz, Georgetown University
Antonio Simões, University of Kansas
Monica Rector, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lyris Wiedemann, Stanford University
Evaluators:
Marshall Eakin, Vanderbilt University
Peggy Sharpe, Florida State University