Can Linguistics Be a Scientific Subject in Portuguese Classes, at High School?: Analysing some teachers’ opinions

• H Rebelo ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade da Madeira

     Universidade da Madeira

     São Roque, Portugal

     
• Localización: Hands-on Science: celebrating science and science education / coord. por M.F.M. Costa, José Benito Vázquez Dorrío, Josep Maria Fernández Novell, Carme Zaragoza Domènech, 2023, ISBN 978-84-8158-973-3, pág. 300
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In Portugal, at High School,Portuguese is a subject where Literature isteaching, but where Linguistics has not a (real)place. This area of knowledge is essential to thelanguage’s studies, especially for students whenthey learn native tongue. However, the HighSchool notebooks confirm it, because the tablesof contents have just some few grammar topics(and not linguistic one) and, even then, theyoccur mixt with all literature references. Thestudents need to read texts like novels and somepoetry, knowing authors and historical contexts,etc.). This all need to be studied during all theyears before incoming the university, as far theHumanities courses. At the end of High School,for the examinations, including at the nationallevel, the most important was Literature. For theUniversities courses, just Literature contents arerequest. There is not any linguistic subject inthem. At the Humanities, the students had nocontact with research in areas like Phonetic,Syntax, Morphology, Semantic, History of theLanguage or another linguistics one. Thatseems a nonsense. Literature can be kept, butLinguistics needs to be taught in high school.When the students arrived at the Humanitiescourses, they haven’t any idea about Linguisticsand the scientific study can be done with thenative tongue, or also with foreign languages.They did not had contact with scientific researchat the language classes, also at Portugueseclasses, even if the name of the subject and thenotebooks matter have this name: Portugueseor Portuguese Language.The question is why this situation is accepted byall, including by teachers? Is Linguistics ascientific subject can be teach in PortugueseClasses, at High School? At a Seminar,spending some time with a group at teacherswho must teach Portuguese as a subject in ahigh school this topic was discussed. Theyanswered a questionnaire about it. Their opinionis important. Analyzing teachers’ point of viewcan bring some understanding about theseparation of areas at school for the knowledge.Can Linguistics be a scientific subject teach inPortuguese Classes, at High School? CanHumanities and Sciences be reconciled? Whatsome teachers of Portuguese think about these?Looking at teachers’ opinions can be thebegging of political changes at school. Puthands-on science at languages classes isindispensable.