THE COURSES

 

Our regular courses are divided in three levels:

 

 

The learners must take a placement test and apply for an interview as soon as they arrive at the university. After that, they are advised to enroll in a level according to the results in the placement test and interview. Each level comprises specific contents that develop the competences of listening, speaking, reading and writing. All the levels give emphasis to the oral communication from basic topics, simpler structures of the language to formal and academic speech.

 

This level is recommended to students who have never learned Portuguese or have only a little knowledge of it. This course will introduce the learners to the Brazilian Portuguese language, that is a Brazilian way of speaking. It prepares learners to interact in daily life situations. It improves the learners’ listening competence enabling them to understand the context of informal conversations. It develops the learners’ writing ability since the beginning of the course with the practice of paragraph writing, descriptions and guided compositions.  It focuses on vocabulary and is supported by grammar through the teaching of pronouns, articles, adjectives, verbs, nouns, slang, idiomatic expressions, present tense, present continuous tense, future tense, imperative and an introduction to the past tense.

Schedules and course functioning - this level is a 64-hour course which is developed in 32 meetings of 2 hours each, twice a week. Classes are held in the classroom with oral explanations showing semantics, grammar and communicative functions. There is extra reinforcement in the language laboratory where learners develop listening comprehension, pronunciation and intonation. This level also includes on-line exercises as self-study.

 

This level is recommended to learners of any nationality who have already studied Portuguese as a foreign language or have some knowledge of Latin languages or are native speakers of them. It prepares the learners to interact in daily life situations or in work situations with fluency and aural comprehension. It develops the speaking, listening, writing and reading competences at a pre-intermediate level. It improves past and future tenses and the indicative and subjunctive mood.

 

Schedules and course functioning - this level is a 64-hour course which is developed in 32 meetings of 2 hours each, twice a week. Classes are held in the classroom with oral explanations showing semantics, grammar and communicative functions. There is extra reinforcement in the language laboratory where learners develop listening comprehension, pronunciation and intonation at a pre-intermediate level. This stage also includes on-line activities as self-study.

This level is recommended to students who have an intermediate knowledge of the Portuguese language. It focuses on oral practice giving emphasis to the communicative competence. It improves the practice of the language through pronunciation and intonation exercises in the language laboratory. In class, the students work with patterns and in groups with various oral activities and games. Fast questions and answers directed to fluent interpretation of messages are stimulated in groupwork too. Students don’t follow a book, but receive on-line printings, newspaper and magazine articles about current affairs, watch documentaries, films, soap operas, advertisements, listen to radio programmes and Brazilian pop songs, read essays and poems written by contemporary Brazilian authors reinforcing comprehension, listening competence, vocabulary and oral skills.

Schedules and course functioning - this level is a 24-hour course, which is developed in 12 meetings of 2 hours each, once a week. Classes are held in the classroom with theoretical explanations and grammar reinforcement but highlighting the oral competence through vocabulary practice.