Analyzing the oral performance of Portuguese as a Host Language speakers through the Outcome Achievement measure

Abstract

The teaching of Portuguese as a Host Language has faced many challenges since its establishment as part of the field of Portuguese as a Foreign Language, mainly for presenting specificities unknown to the teachers and researchers in the field (GROSSO, 2010; DEUSDARÁ; ARANTES; BRENNER, 2018). Among these challenges are the methods employed to analyze the oral performance of the Host Language speakers. With this in mind, this report aims at discussing the evaluation of the oral performance of adult immigrants, beginner students of Brazilian Portuguese as a Host Language, based on two descriptive scales of the measure of Outcome Achievement, a multifaceted measure that looks, mainly, at pragmatic aspects of language use in tasks whose main focus is the communicative outcome of the performance. Even though the proposal of criteria that compose the measure of Outcome Achievement is based on the interpretation of raters, which might bring incongruences to the evaluations, the measure presents an alternative to evaluating oral performance in contrast with other more traditional measures. In conclusion, the employment of the Outcome Achievement measure to analyze oral performance in tasks to teach Portuguese as a Host Language brings aspects that are inherent to this context of teaching, taking into account the immediate objectives of language use of the immigrant population.

Let’s talk tasks

“…After all, this is a here-and-now task, with visual support and a closed outcome.For the study in which this task was implemented, seven features of evaluation were considered to determine the Outcome Achievement of the performance (Communicative Objective, Correctness, Con-text, Coherence, Clarity, Prosody, and Vocabulary). See Marcelino & D'Ely (2020) for a complete account.…”

“…It's important to highlight that these tasks were designed after a needs analysis was conducted with the students and teachers of the project. This needs analysis uncovered ten target situations where this group of learners had immediate needs for using Portuguese (Marcelino & D'Ely, 2020). Four target tasks were chosen for the classroom intervention.…”

Questionar e subverter práticas colonialistas na sala de aula: a análise crítica de necessidades no ensino de Português como Língua de Acolhimento

“…Para um relato completo sobre o processo de elaboração e implementação dos ciclos de tarefas aqui mencionados, veja Marcelino (2020). 3 Para a lista de códigos, análise e categorização completa das respostas, vejaMarcelino (2020).…”