Cultural representations in foreign language education: a study on chinese learners of Portuguese

• Autor(a) principal: Castelo, Adelina
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Xavier, Lola Geraldes, Rouxinol, Cláudia
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/14946
• topic: Cultural representations; Interculturality; Mobility program; Chinese learners; Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL); Representações culturais; Interculturalidade; Programa de mobilidade; Aprendentes chineses; Português como Língua Estrangeira (PLE)

Studying a foreign language is strongly associated with learning the target culture(s), developing representations of the foreign language realities, and acquiring interculturality. A pilot study conducted over a 4-year bachelor’s degree program in Portuguese as a Foreign Language aimed at understanding the cultural representations of Portuguese-speaking realities by Chinese students and how they evolved. Results show that: the foreign culture representations only slightly change over the 4 years; the mobility programs’ destination greatly influences representations of the host country; the students’ passivity causes superficial and school-based cultural representations of the target cultures, countries, and their inhabitants. These results have several pedagogical implications concerning the mobility programs’ preparation and the intercultural approach in the classroom.