PORT 301 (Spring)
COURSE OBJECTIVES
This is a course aimed at those students who wish to attain a working knowledge of Portuguese, and the objective conditions will be created whereby all students can have a successful learning experience. Students will:
- develop communicative skills.
- understand ideas at the advanced level expressed by other speakers.
- use Portuguese to communicate ideas about self and others; talk about current events; defend points of view; provide detailed descriptions and narrations in all time frames (present, past, and future); among other functions mostly at the advanced level.
- interact with authentic Portuguese texts on a variety of subjects at the advanced and superior level.
- attain an increased awareness of and cultural sensitivity to the Portuguese language.
- gain knowledge of some social and historical aspects of the Portuguese-speaking world.
- learn more about the Portuguese-speaking communities in Seattle.
Students taking PORT 301 are expected to finish the course at the Intermediate High or Advanced Low level of proficiency. Their level of proficiency will depend on a series of factors, including previous exposure to the language and knowledge of another Romance language. For that reason, the Intermediate High level is a more realistic goal for most students enrolled in PORT 301.
Advanced Low
Speakers at the Advanced Low sublevel are able to handle a variety of communicative tasks. They are able to participate in most informal and some formal conversations on topics related to school, home, and leisure activities. They can also speak about some topics related to employment, current events, and matters of public and community interest.
Advanced Low speakers demonstrate the ability to narrate and describe in the major time frames of past, present, and future in paragraph-length discourse with some control of aspect. In these narrations and descriptions, Advanced Low speakers combine and link sentences into connected discourse of paragraph length, although these narrations and descriptions tend to be handled separately rather than interwoven. They can handle appropriately the essential linguistic challenges presented by a complication or an unexpected turn of events.
Intermediate High
Intermediate High speakers are able to converse with ease and confidence when dealing with the routine tasks and social situations of the Intermediate level. They are able to handle successfully uncomplicated tasks and social situations requiring an exchange of basic information related to their work, school, recreation, particular interests, and areas of competence.
Intermediate High speakers can handle a substantial number of tasks associated with the Advanced level, but they are unable to sustain performance of all of these tasks all of the time. Intermediate High speakers can narrate and describe in all major time frames using connected discourse of paragraph length, but not all the time. Typically, when Intermediate High speakers attempt to perform Advanced-level tasks, their speech exhibits one or more features of breakdown, such as the failure to carry out fully the narration or description in the appropriate major time frame, an inability to maintain paragraph-length discourse, or a reduction in breadth and appropriateness of vocabulary. Intermediate High speakers can generally be understood by native speakers unaccustomed to dealing with non-natives, although interference from another language may be evident (e.g., use of code-switching, false cognates, literal translations), and a pattern of gaps in communication may occur.
Source: http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/public/ACTFLProficiencyGuidelines2012_FINAL.pdf