Academic Program: Seven-week Session

Students enrolled in the Portuguese School will be registered in one of five levels according to their proficiency as determined by placement tests and prior experience with Portuguese or other Romance Languages. Students will also have the opportunity to take graduate level credits to be transferred to other programs.

All courses in the seven-week program provide proficiency-oriented instruction in listening, reading, speaking, writing, and grammar, with an emphasis on Brazilian Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian culture and literature. In addition, we have been offering a European Portuguese component as part of the curriculum since 2008.

Daily activities normally include four to five hours of classroom instruction plus additional homework and assignments.  Schedules, texts, and staffing are subject to change.  All students in the Portuguese School will engage in extensive reading activities using the texts from the invited lecturers, novels, short stories, plays, and journalistic accounts.  Each level offers three required units encompassing grammatical forms, stylistics and composition, pronunciation and phonetics, oral expression in formal contexts, as well as interpersonal oral expression.

Thematic Units

Students in each of the levels also enroll in courses that emphasize language through cultural contexts.  These classes are divided into thematic units that are team taught by the Portuguese School faculty or invited writers, scholars, or artists.

Teachers Institute

For teachers who wish to improve or maintain their Portuguese language skills and also prepare secondary age appropriate materials in Portuguese.  Teachers who wish to participate in this project will enroll in PGSE 6610. Please contact the coordinator for more information