Teaching Portuguese as a host language in a multiethnic context:

challenges and proposals

Abstract

This paper proposes a qualitative analysis of the difficulties and challenges of teaching the Portuguese language in multi-ethnic classroom contexts (that is, with students from different backgrounds), from the perspective of Portuguese as a host language (PLAc), considering the linguistic knowledge, and cultural and educational background of each student. To do so, I will use studies that have already discussed related issues, such as the challenges of teaching Portuguese to immigrants in Brazil – and, in particular, to Haitian refugees – and I will contrast these works with two distinct professional experiences of teaching Portuguese, namely , as a volunteer in the projects Bem-Vindos, by Graded School of São Paulo (focused on refugee students, mostly Hispanic) and Sol Novum, by the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo and the NGO ENACTUS (focused on refugee students from different parts of the world , with a significant participation of Haitian learners). The first stands out for its formative aspect, since part of the volunteers are high school students, guided by teachers of Portuguese, promoting teaching practice as well as the humanistic character of voluntary activity, while the second privileges a more traditional teaching approach, aimed at immigrants who need proof of proficiency in Portuguese to regularize their status in Brazil. From this qualitative and comparative analysis, based on the teaching experience in these two projects, I seek to demonstrate the importance of teaching Portuguese as a host language and the adaptation of learning methodologies in different contexts, taking into account, notably, its pluriethnic and multilingual character, intrinsic to classes for forced immigrants, exiles and refugees.