Ninth Volume of Portuguese Language Journal Available

October 30, 2015

Volume 9, "Portuguese in the World Today," of the Portuguese Language Journal (PLJ) is now available online. The LAII proudly partners with the University of Florida to support the PLJ, an academic endeavor created to promote and disseminate information about the teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language. PLJ also aims to provide a venue to improve the collaboration and exchange of information among Portuguese language teachers.

Dr. Margo Milleret, Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UNM, currently serves as PLJ Editor, but is stepping down now following her retirement from UNM. Alongside Dr. Milleret, Glaucia Silva (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth) serves as Associate Editor.

In her editor's note, Milleret describes the wealth of topics included in the publication and also shares her departing thoughts as she steps down from her role as PLJ Editor. She writes, "This issue of PLJ demonstrates that Portuguese has become a global language that is being taught around the world to a diverse audience of learners. Through this collection of essays the reader will travel to several continents and meet learners who are heritage speakers, Spanish-speakers, French-speakers, or who may have ties to the Portuguese past in Hawaii. This is a rich collection of essays that offers both teaching applications as well as theoretical and methodological research. It is my privilege to end my tenure as editor of six volumes with this one that gives an overview of how Portuguese instruction and research have grown and expanded across the globe in the last ten years. PLJ has played its part in reporting on these changes with essays from scholars working in the US, Brazil and beyond."

According to Ferreira and Wiedemann, "The aim of this issue of PLJ is to continue to share findings in this vibrant and growing field. The issue opens with interviews of two scholars who have been involved with the teaching of Portuguese for Spanish Speakers for all of their academic lives and remain leading figures in the field. They recount the development of PSS in the US and in Brazil, respectively, providing overviews and a set of references, which will be invaluable for both newcomers to the field and well-established scholars. The interviews are followed by seven articles focusing on Portuguese for Spanish speakers, and two additional articles that fall outside this issue's theme. It is interesting to note that two of the seven articles come from Brazil, two others from Hispanic America, and four from the US, thus being representative as a whole of the three contexts in which Portuguese for Spanish Speakers is taught and studied. The topics of the articles are also quite comprehensive and complement each other."

To read the complete text of the current issue as well as archived articles, visit the PLJ website.