Student Motivation in Learning Portuguese

Response 2 to "Brazil's Rise and Portuguese as a Strategic Foreign Language: Preparing Tomorrow's Military Leaders"

The Air Force Academy has decided to add Portuguese as one of its strategic foreign languages, this in part because of a number of pragmatic, political, economic and social reasons. (And this is despite the fact that Brazil is currently suffering through a serious economic recession, political corruption scandals and massive civil unrest.) For the rest of us, what is our motivation in building and sustaining programs in Portuguese?

Notice that even this question shows a bias on perspective. Often in academic settings the stimulus for program development is teacher-centered or institution-focused. Rarely are learner needs or society demands the catalyst for program change. This is a delicate balance, which is no way minimizes the importance of the teachers, researchers or institutions. In the case of the Portuguese language, however, personal motivations that are learner-centered surpass all other reasons for learning the language. Learners of Portuguese by and large are self-motivated learners. To be honest, almost all learners of Portuguese ignore the typical promotional reasons that are given for learning Portuguese (e.g., seventh most spoken language, over 200 million speakers, former Portuguese colonies, etc.). None of these reasons is personal, and in learning Portuguese everything is personal. The following statements, typical of the types of reasons all teachers of Portuguese hear from students, illustrate why students want to learn:

• • I study botany and every summer I go to the Amazon to search for new species of plants.

• • As a geologist I'm currently learning to cut semiprecious stones. I hope to learn Portuguese to be able to buy stones when I go to Minas Gerais.

• • I play in a band and we've been learning forró. It's just awesome and it's given me the bug to learn Portuguese.

• • My mom is from São Paulo and I've always wanted to be able to talk to my relatives in Brazil.

• • My parents were missionaries in Brazil and I hope to return and do the same.

• • I am interested in alternative energy sources and Brazil is way ahead in sugarcane-based renewable energy.

• • How come Brazilian soccer stadiums are so run down? I want to go to Brazil to study the reasons.

• • I lived on the Peruvian border with Brazil. I'm amazed at how locals cross borders to take advantage of programs from both governments.

• • Brazilian jiu jitsu is unique among martial arts. I'm catching on, but I want to learn from personal trainers in Rio.

This list could go one with hundreds of additional entries.

If we believe in a student-center approach to education, Portuguese language offers a gigantic opportunity. Our challenge is that it is difficult to create a program that centers on student needs and at the same time meets the perceived logistic and programmatic requirements that academic structures impose. Our reality is that tuitions, prerequisites, majors, credit hours, class size, grading restrictions, and a host of other factors diminish our effectiveness in meeting the needs of students, who already have specific goals associated with their Portuguese language learning.

What does all this mean? It means that we need to personalize the teaching of Portuguese. Allow students from the very beginning to shape their language learning to fit their goals. It means that "language for specific purposes" applies to every learner. It means that traditional programs should give way to individualized objectives. Even without full restructuring, there are simple things that we can do to move from an institutional model of teaching Portuguese to a learner-centered approach. First, at every level and in every course, create a syllabus that has enough flexibility to include student-generated content. Authorize students to choose their own topics and readings, even their own vocabulary. Second, allow students to build this content on an individual basis. That is to say, accept that not everyone needs to read and study the exact same...