UM’s online Portuguese language summer course ends

The 34th Portuguese Summer Course, organised by the University of Macau (UM) Department of Portuguese, has ended. This is the first time that UM has held this course online. Students are very pleased with the arrangements and were very active in the language courses and theme-based courses.

During the closing ceremony, Dora Gago, director of the Department of Portuguese, and José Pascoal, coordinator of the summer programme, congratulated the students on completing the programme and praised them for their hard work and progress made in the past two weeks. The ceremony also showcased the works of the students, including recorded songs they learned from the music class and pictures of the dishes they cooked after finishing the gastronomy class. Pascoal adds that online teaching requires the use of innovative approaches and close cooperation between teachers and students.

This year’s summer programme attracted over 180 students from all over the world. Students attended the course in countries like Brazil, Angola, mainland China, as well as European in countries such as Portugal. Over 90% of the students fulfilled attendance and completion requirements and received certificates of attendance or achievement.

The summer programme was divided into two parts, namely assisted-learning (using the Zoom platform to accept teacher guidance) and self-learning (students can receive individual assistance from teachers if necessary when doing self-study online). There were a total of 60 hours of courses at basic and elementary levels and up to 100 hours of courses at intermediate level or above (B1, B2 and C1 levels).

The summer programme also featured many theme-based courses, covering topics such as gastronomy, music, film, education, language education, linguistics and society, as well as old topics from past editions such as literature, history, and translation. The gastronomy and music courses, taught entirely on Moodle without Zoom support, aimed to cultivate self-learning skills among students.

The summer programme was supported by the Higher Education Fund, which provides financial assistance to outstanding local students in higher education institutions of language classes at different levels.

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