Macau Polytechnic Institute (IPM) President Lei Heong Iok said the tertiary education institution would launch Portuguese-language teacher training courses soon.
Lei made the announcement on the sidelines of a graduation ceremony for IPM students of the academic year 2015-2016.
Lei said that after the launch of a new bachelor’s programme in International Chinese Language Education this year, the institute was preparing to launch courses for Portuguese-language teachers and would look to submit the application to the government as soon as possible.
According to the IPM website, the four-year programme, slated to be launched in August, is for both native and non-native Chinese speakers. The programme will be conducted in Putonghua, Cantonese, English and Portuguese, according to the website.
Lei said it wasn’t difficult to find Portuguese-speaking people to teach Portuguese, but they often lacked the full understanding of how to teach Chinese speakers the Romance language, so he hoped that through the teacher training courses, the institute could help train some Chinese-speaking Portuguese-language teachers as a contribution to Macau’s role as a Sino-Lusophone platform.
(Macau News / The Macau Post Daily)
