Chatting in Portuguese: strategies for spoken interaction between Erasmus and Portuguese students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the 2nd semester of the academic year 2019-2020, under COVID-19, Erasmus students who attended the various colleges of the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon found themselves deprived of the possibility that an international academic experience promotes, namely social contact and immersion in the living language in the country in which they are studying. The social isolation to which we were obliged thus prevented the natural acquisition of a language in the context of immersion. For that reason, it would be of utmost importance to provide these students with the opportunity to develop their communicative competence in Portuguese. Bearing in mind the goals presented i) to minimize the social isolation of higher education students; ii) to promote the linguistic enrichment in Portuguese language, in an informal context, of Erasmus students and iii) to contribute to the intercultural awareness  of students, a strategy was carried out that brought dialogue between Erasmus and Portuguese students, in four oriented informal conversations, which culminated in a stakeholder reflection process, based on a questionnaire survey. The results testify to the advantages of this experience, namely with regard to the intercultural component and the development of oral communication in Portuguese.