Projeto "Pelo Mundo": a configuração de uma política linguistica em um curso de português como língua adicional para candidatos ao Programa de Estudantes-Convênio de Graduação (PEC-G)

Abstract

In existence since 1965, the Exchange Program for Undergraduate Students (PEC-G), developed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE) in partnership with the Ministry of Education (MEC) and some public and private universities, has allowed foreigners who have completed their secondary education to pursue undergraduate studies in Brazil. These students come from developing countries with which the Brazilian government maintains educational and cultural agreements. According to decree 7.948, approved on March 12th, 2013, it is required for participants to present the Certificate of Proficiency in Portuguese for Foreigners (Celpe-Bras). Furthermore, this statute states that candidates from countries where the Celpe-Bras is not administered may take the test in Brazil, after having completed a preparatory Portuguese for Foreigners course at an accredited institution of higher education (IES). More than fifty years after its inception, PEC-G is still frequently silenced in discourses about internationalization at Brazilian universities, despite it being the program that brings the most international students to these institutions (BIZON, 2013). Consequently, issues regarding its implementation are largely made invisible. Aligning ourselves with Interdisciplinary Applied Linguistics (MOITA LOPES, 2006) and Critical Literacy (MATTOS; VALERIO, 2010; JORDÃO, 2014), this research focuses on the Pelo Mundo project, carried out, during the 2015 academic year, in a Portuguese as an Additional Language course for PEC-G candidates at a federal university in Minas Gerais. Through excerpts from the reflective journal of the teacher-researcher and interviews with five PEC-G students and five teachers who participated in the project, we analyze the linguistic policy constructed during the course, concentrating specifically on the projects development and its contributions to the education of the surroundings, rooted in interculturalism (MAHER, 2007). Furthermore, we analyze the projects contributions to the development of a critical civic consciousness on the part of the students, concerning the ways in which they positioned themselves and were positioned by Others (BIZON, 2013, MATTOS, 2014) in the society which they sought to integrate, giving them the opportunity to make visible the issues that concerned them as PEC-G student candidates. While enhancing the visibility of the PEC-G students and their concerns about the ways in which they are often portrayed, how they portray themselves and Others (JORDÃO, 2014), as well as their critical education grounded in a pluricentric linguistic policy, the analysis of the results shows the successes and contradictions of the Pelo Mundo project, revealing the need for more frequent and extensive projects, preferably creating institutional links that decisively favor education of the surroundings and interculturalism.