Kelm, Orlando R.

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Global Business LanguagesVolume 16 Partnerships and New Alliances Article 1112-1-2011Review: Working Portuguese for Beginners.Monica Rector, Regina Santos, Marcelo Amorim,with M. Lynne Gerber. Washington DC:Georgetown University Press, 2010Orlando R. KelmUniversity of Texas at Austin, orkelm@mail.utexas.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gblCopyright © 2011 by Purdue Research Foundation. Global Business Languages is produced by Purdue CIBER. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gblThis is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freelyread, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Recommended CitationKelm, Orlando R. (2011) "Review: Working Portuguese for Beginners. Monica Rector, Regina Santos, Marcelo Amorim, with M.Lynne Gerber. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010," Global Business Languages: Vol. 16 , Article 11.Available at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gbl/vol16/iss1/11Global Business Languages (2011)103REVIEWMonica Rector, Regina Santos, Marcelo Amorim, with M. Lynne Gerber. Working Portuguese for Beginners. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2010.Working Portuguese is a textbook for beginning-level Portuguese that will not be for everyone, but it will be exactly what some others will desire. Not all learners are going to want, for example, to focus on describing the orga-nization of a commercial enterprise. When it comes to language for specifi c purposes, designers of textbooks can take one of two approaches. The fi rst is to say that no matter what the fi nal objective, beginning-level students all have initially similar needs in establishing a linguistic foundation. For example, all learners of Portuguese need to conjugate verbs, learn about agreement, and understand tense and aspect. The “specialization” of language for business, emergency responders, law, or engineering best happens after the foundation is established. The challenge that comes with this fi rst approach is that learn-ers may never get to their “specifi c” purpose. Quite simply, a nurse does not have time to study Spanish for years and never learn how to say, “turn your head and cough.” The second approach is to say that learners should be exposed to the con-tent that they will use from the very beginning of their language learning. For learners interested in business, one starts with a business context. There are two major challenges that come with this second approach as well. The fi rst one has to do with the fact that it fragments learners. It is diffi cult to combine students who have drastically different learning objectives. The second chal-lenge related to this approach is that the “specifi c purpose” may not tie in well to beginning-level language tasks. For example, police offi cers who deal with family disturbances are involved in a linguistic task that simply requires a high level of general profi ciency, much more than a routine traffi c stop. It becomes diffi cult to teach learners how to do tasks that require advanced language skills, when the learners are at beginning stages of the language.Working Portuguese clearly takes the second approach of creating a begin-ning language course within the context of business. The book still presents 104 KELMthe traditional beginning concepts for new learners of Portuguese: verb conjugations, agreement, use of pronouns, past tense, por vs. para, etc. The context, however, is built on a good mix of topics such as business meetings, extending invitations, social gatherings, sales meetings, making adminis-trative decisions. In all there are twenty-four lessons, which are enhanced with dialogues, vocabulary lists, cultural readings, and practice exercises. The textbook includes a DVD-ROM with mp3 tracks of the dialogues and the audio exercises. There is also a complete Portuguese-English, English-Portuguese glossary. The teacher’s edition also includes an extensive array of supplementary slides and sample quizzes and tests. If desired, users can also incorporate online activities via Quia.com <http://Quia.com>.Working Portuguese does respond to the challenges of the textbook ap-proach it follows. Fragmentation is overcome by a number of creative strate-gies. First of all, the business context is a popular enough theme to still have a fairly large audience. It is not so uncommon to teach language learners who want to have a business focus. There are plenty of textbooks that present the content from the perspective of a university student. In Working Portuguese it is refreshing to see the business setting serve as the foundation for the pre-sentation of grammar and vocabulary. Next, although the topics are business related, they are not business specialized. That is to say, the topics are general enough that learners who are not business focused can still use the book. For example, lesson 12 is entitled “Como chegar ao seu destino” (“How to get to your destination”). The vocabulary is general enough to include words like “traffi c light, ice cream parlor, bookstore, pharmacy, straight ahead, to the left,” all words that one would expect in a chapter about giving direc-tions. The grammar topic of this chapter includes command forms, another item that is frequently associated with giving directions. Third, the content in Working Portuguese is fl exible enough that the textbook can be used for classroom application, individualized instruction (self-directed learning), or distance education. There does not have to be a large audience for an instruc-tor to use the book.The second challenge to overcome is whether or not the business content can be applicable and appropriate to beginning levels. This, indeed, is one of the strengths of Working Portuguese. There are no attempts to have students practice using Portuguese in tasks that are beyond the beginning level of the book. The textbook does not cover income statements, investment strategies, stock market analysis, INCOTERMS, or other such topics. This may sound obvious, but too often business language textbooks jump into topics that force learners to deal with tasks that are beyond the profi ciency levels of the learners. 105REVIEWInstead, Working Portuguese limits itself to topics that are more manageable, for example, planning a meeting, selling your idea, employee responsibilities, and department goals. Indeed, Working Portuguese resolves the challenges that often accompany textbooks in language for specifi c purposes.Working Portuguese is part of a series, which includes Spanish and Mandarin as well. Language students at the Kenan-Flager Business School at the University of North Carolina, where the Working Language Series was created, use these textbooks as part of their pre-immersion travel ex-perience. Indeed, students can benefi t from using this textbook as part of a pre-departure preparation for in-country experience, and also as part of a traditional curriculum.Orlando R. KelmUniversity of Texas at Austin

Review: Working Portuguese for Beginners. Monica Rector, Regina Santos, Marcelo Amorim, with M. Lynne Gerber. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010

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Review: Working Portuguese for Beginners. Monica Rector, Regina Santos, Marcelo Amorim, with M. Lynne Gerber. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010

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