| Summary: | This paper aims to discuss the policies and practices of the Portuguese
language teaching in Macau in the period following the handover, i.e., from
the 20th December 1999 to the present. Thus, the focus of this research is the
situation of teaching/learning Portuguese since the handover, with the objective
of providing leads, so that researchers, especially from abroad, will have a set of
information to support future research on this subject. A number of policies are
reviewed, such as those establishing Portuguese as one of the official languages
of the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Macau, or others, supporting
the language spread and teaching, with the objective of training “bilingual
talents”3
which will allow Macau to turn into the Platform between China and the
Portuguese-speaking countries.
Current data indicates that there is an increase in demand for courses for Portuguese
as a second language, caused, in our view, by the shift in paradigm in how the
value of the Portuguese language is understood. Notwithstanding the reticence
associated to how many would consider a language to have only an affective and
cultural value, the fact is that, in Mainland China and in Macau, Portuguese draws
students as it has an ever-greater economic weight. Indeed, the People’s Republic
of China’s Central Government’s policy of economic openness to Portuguesespeaking
countries has exponentially increased the demand for bilingual
professionals, speaking Chinese and Portuguese, facilitating their integration into
the work market, and leading to attractive wages. Chinese pragmatism leads to
Portuguese language courses being regarded as the door to a promising future,
even if, in a second phase, there is also an affective connection and the interest for
the culture underlying the language.
We may conclude that there are significant policies and practices, while there is
lacking of a strategic management allowing a global vision and an interconnection/
coordination between the various levels of teaching, so that learning would become
gradual and cumulative, avoiding the numerous “new starts” which take place due
to ignoring the students’ history concerning Portuguese language learning.
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