Português para falantes de espanhol—Ensino e aquisição / Portuguese for Spanish Speakers—Teaching and Acquisition (review)

It is a pleasure to present this collection of articles, issued, for the most part, from a selection of papers presented at the second Symposium on the Teaching of Portuguese for Spanish Speakers, which took place at Stanford University in 2006. This book reflects the steady development of this area of studies in the last decades. The roots of Portuguese for Spanish speakers can be dated back to the 50s, but its widespread reach in the United States started probably in the 1990s. I was very lucky to have been given the opportunity to participate in this process, in the 80s as a teacher of Portuguese precisely for Spanish speakers at the University of Texas at Austin, and in the 90s with my book Com licença, produced under the auspices of the 1989 ALCANCE, a FIPSE supported project granted by the US Department of Education, led by David Jackson and Fred Ellison, at UT Austin. The project benefited from the administrative support of the Institute of Latin American Studies at UT, under Richard Adams and Michael Conroy, and the participation of Dale Koike, Elizabeth Jackson, the late Karin Van den Dool for the OPI training, and myself. (I bring up the project ALCANCE and colleagues directly involved with its creation, but I would not take the risk of mentioning other individuals, because there have been so many people directly or indirectly involved in strengthening the teaching of Portuguese for Spanish speakers, that I fear leaving out some important names.)

The book is prefaced by one of the renowned names behind successful developments in Portuguese as a second language, Francisco Gomes de Matos. His preface and the presentation of the book by Lyris Wiedemann and Matilde V. R. Scaramucci give a good idea of how far this enterprise has reached. Together, their presentations are an enjoyable tour of studies on Portuguese as a second language and for Spanish speakers. It can be easily seen that these symposia are here to stay. The third one happened in Campinas, Brazil (2008), and the fourth one took place March 10-12, 2011, at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC.

It is motivating to see former participants of the first symposium back on stage, expanding their previous investigations, and new scholars enriching and bringing more vitality with their new views. Among former participants, Maria Antonia Cowles opens the volume with an overall view of current policies and practice in Portuguese studies; she also coauthored a second article with Alessandra Pires on the voices of the learner, a topic also explored by Denise Santos and Gláucia Silva. Dale Koike coauthors with Ricardo Gualda a study on noticing and transfer. Marianne Ackerberg discusses one of the most important differences in Portuguese and Spanish, outside phonology and phonetics: the teaching of the preterite and present perfect. John Jensen investigates rhythmic features of Spanish and English on learners of Portuguese. Ana Carvalho investigates the attitudes of native speakers towards portunhol. Matilde Scaramucci discusses the new focus on the Exam Celpe-Bras in a context of Spanish speakers, and Margo Milleret shares with us her experience with the evaluation of Portuguese programs and the needs of Spanish speakers who are learning Portuguese.

Among the newcomers, the book has four new names. Marisela Colín Rodea explores the reaches of the culture component in the context of Spanish speakers of Portuguese, and Antonio José Barcelar da Silva argues in favor of teaching pragmatics, based on his analysis of the rituals in greetings and leave takings. The two others look into the acquisition of Spanish by Portuguese speakers. Kelly A. Lowther discusses native language use by Portuguese speakers taking Spanish (and also English) classes, while Fernanda Rangel Pestana Allegro and Sandra Madureira analyze the acquisition of Spanish by Portuguese speakers. Actually, the two last ones fit rather well in the...