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Portuguese As a Minority Language Attitudes of Undergraduate Students Studying Portuguese Literature

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Portuguese As a Minority Language Attitudes of Undergraduate Students Studying Portuguese Literature Researching Bias Portuguese as a Minority Language Attitudes of Undergraduate Students Studying Portuguese Literature Sónia Maria Nunes Reis Language acquisition cannot be separated variety is considered more standard by the tions of the way the target language is from the social arena in which it takes L2 Portuguese learners. written or spoken—that is either EP or place. (Dörnyei, 2009, p. 227) It is important to note that L1 refers BP—as well as the cultural aspects as- to a student’s mother tongue and L2 is the sociated to each of these two varieties of Introduction second language that a student acquires. Portuguese. Herein all references to L2 are to the Por- Most of the students who chose such Second language acquisition theorists tuguese language course being taught at courses select them as an elective. Some have yet to conceptualize an understand- the university level. students who enroll want to catch up on ing of undergraduate students’ attitudes The primary research question for this the Portuguese language missed over the and experiences when studying the two study was: years while others arrive in a first year different versions of Portuguese language Portuguese course for an easy credit. Con- most often encountered in experimental u What are the attitudes and course trary to what Gardner and Lambert (1972) literature, European Portuguese (EP) and experiences found among L2 Portu- suggest is the ideal age to start learning a Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The differences guese undergraduate students with second language, the participants in this between EP and BP raise some interest- respect to EP versus BP? study are much older and arrive in L2 Por- ing issues that are well worth considering tuguese university courses with stronger through undergraduate university stu- Background: attitudes and expectations about which dents’ perceptions and attitudes. Foreign Language Acquisition variety of Portuguese they should learn in Instructors of undergraduate courses an undergraduate Portuguese university in Portuguese literature suggest that in Gardner and Lambert (1972) suggest course. For instance, when referring to EP terms of curriculum design, curriculum that it is around the age of 10 that second and BP, some students have argued that delivery, and attitudes of students these language learners are most receptive and one version is a language and the other a differences can be quite extreme, espe- display a friendlier attitude towards for- dialect. This raises the question whether cially when one compares EP and BP with eign language acquisition, whereas learn- we are in the presence of one language the Spanish language. Students enrolled ing an L2 and the culture associated with with two dialects or is it actually two in undergraduate Portuguese courses that L2 language later in life is more dif- languages? are often taking or have taken Spanish ficult because the L2 learner tends to link These L2 adult Portuguese learners language courses, making possible a cultural and linguistic differences with the are not alone in pointing out some differ- comparison between both programs and norm that the student is used to in his or ences between EP and BP. For instance, languages. The purpose of this study is to her own L1. Moreover, it has also been back in 1994, Kato and Raposo stated: understand the existing discrepancies in argued in experimental literature that the Portuguese language and the result- the attitudes, motivation, and classroom European and Brazilian Portuguese have ing attitudes of students when faced with experiences of an L2 learner will result in long been considered as two dialects of the these differences. the student’s success or failure in a foreign same language, with variable aspects in their lexicon, phonology and grammar. Using data collected with L1 English/ language course. Thus the learner’s atti- L2 Portuguese students at a Canadian tudes cannot be separated from what goes There are, in fact, remarkable differ- university, this article will show how a on in the classroom. ences between EP and BP. One difference strong preference for one variety of the Most of the students registered in concerns the placement of words within Portuguese language exists when studing L2 Portuguese undergraduate university common phrases. Some examples of these the arts but how a different preference courses in Canada are of Portuguese de- dialectal variations follow: emerges when analyzing which language scent. They are often heritage language speakers who spoke only Portuguese at (1) a. Chamo-me Maria. (EP) (My name is Maria). Sónia Maria Nunes Reis is a professor home with their grandparents and parents on the Faculty of Education until they started school at the age of four. b. Me chamo Maria. (BP) at The University of Western Ontario, They therefore arrive in undergraduate (My name is Maria). London, Ontario, Canada. university courses with preconceived no- WINTER 2011 61 Linguistically Diverse Students & Their Families (2) a. Eu vi ele no ano passado. language learner. It is an internalized and Portugal (Weinreich, Labov, & Her- (BP-spoken) ideal concept that the L2 learner has of zog, 1968). Thus, EP and BP are seen as (I saw him last year). himself or herself. Second, the “Ought two relatively heterogeneous varieties b. Eu o vi no ano passado. L2 Self” is a more extrinsically motivated of the Portuguese language. This raises (BP- written) self-attainment that an individual pos- the following questions in relation to the (I saw him last year). sesses when trying to follow the norms of current study: Which language variety what he or she believes is expected in a L2 is being learned in our L2 Portuguese c. Eu vi-o no ano passado. (EP – spoken and written) language situation. Third, the novelty in undergraduate courses? Are the students (I saw him last year). Dörnyei’s reconfiguration of L2 learning seeing one variety of Portuguese as being (2009) suggests that the environment in more linguistically educated than other? For purposes of this study I chose to the L2 classroom plays an important role Which one of the two is more vernacular? narrow the research to focus on the at- in the learning outcomes. titudes and classroom experiences of the Methodology L2 Portuguese undergraduate learner, The Language Situation The participants in this study were drawing on the theoretical considerations in L2 Portuguese Courses described by Dörnyei (2009) in his book all undergraduate students who had each The L2 Motivational Self-System. I felt EP and BP are two somewhat het- taken an L2 first-year Portuguese under- that after looking at a vast number of erogeneous varieties of the Portuguese graduate course. Their languages were L1 other influential approaches, including language that need to be looked at from a English and L2 Portuguese. In this context Gardner (1985), Dörnyei’s 2009 work socio-historic dimension. BP has a long his- the intent of the study was to consider: tory of being spoken only and not written seemed to be the most promising for 1. The attitudes that the L2 Portu- by the marginalized illiterate minorities at investigating L2 learning. He offers an guese learners have regarding the the time when Brazil was under Portuguese additional component of language learn- two main varieties of Portuguese (EP governance. These minority groups were ing not previously addressed that made it and BP) (see Figure 1). especially appropriate for this study. for the most part slaves from the African Equally significant is that in the area continent who came with their own lan- 2. How the classroom experience has of experimental literature not much has guages and gradually developed a Creole an impact on the attitudes of L2 Por- been said about the acquisition of minor- language as their native languages mixed tuguese learners (see Figure 2). ity languages at the university level. Most with Portuguese. One result of this mixture The participants were each asked to studies have focused on the L2 learner at of language was BP. In contrast, EP was comment on eight affective factors of the a much younger age—Meisel, Clahsen, the variety of Portuguese used almost ex- two versions of Portuguese: sound, expres- and Pienemann (1981), Krashen (1982), clusively as the written language, and thus siveness, musicality, elegance, literature, Cummins (1984), Odlin (1989), Skehan it was seen as the standard. science, preciseness, and standardization. (1989), Genesee (1995), Lightbown and William Labov (1972), one of the pio- Dörnyei (2009) states that “affect”—the Spada (1999), Snow (1992), and VanPatten neers in the theories of language change, way by which research literature refers to and Sanz (1995), among others. Although argues that any linguistic phenomenon emotions—has been a somewhat neglected Dörnyei’s work (2009) does not address any must be considered from a socio-historic topic in applied linguistics despite the fact specific age group of learners, it seems to perspective, especially when applied to that second language learning can be an provide a long overdue break-through in the the linguistic situation between Brazil emotionally taxing experience (p.219). conceptualized theory of L2 acquisition. While previously Dörnyei proposed a configuration of an L2 theory that synthe- Figure 1 sized several of the influential constructs in the field of language acquisition, the novelty of his current and more updated model in The L2 Motivational Self System is that it is constructed under the view that there are now three components to be taken into consideration in any L2 class- room and not just two as seen previously in Dörnyei (2005) and other research. According to Dörnyei these three con- stituents are the “Ideal L2 Self,” the “Ought L2 Self,” and the “L2 Learning Experience” (Dörnyei, 2009). Such a conceptual ladder is what most research has been focusing on over the last two decades and thus is what I feel constitutes an important structure worth utilizing in analyzing an L2 Portu- guese course.
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