This course sequence is designed for students with no previous classroom instruction or functional ability in Portuguese, and little or no previous experience in another Romance Language. Students are exposed to intensive grammar instruction to develop their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Most students completing this course sequence will be able to initiate, sustain, and close a conversation dealing with familiar or predictable topics, and will be able to write short narratives and read authentic texts based on specific reading strategies. They will notice a tremendous difference in terms of comprehension from week 1 to week 7, and by the end of the program they will create with the language to a certain degree, combining elements to communicate personal meaning and satisfy relatively simple social demands with confidence, often in a reactive mode. Students in this course will also be able to better understand the complexities of the target language culture. Based on data gathered during the previous Portuguese School summers, the majority of students completing this program achieved “Intermediate” sublevels in the final oral assessment.

Basic bibliography: Pastreau, C. et al. Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language. 2nd. Edition, Prentice Hall, 2012.

Set with Textbook, SAM, answer key, and Portuguese-English dictionary. SAM and answer key may be Brazilian Port. or European Port., depending on the variant student wants to emphasize.