The University of Macau (UM) will not reduce the number of Portuguese courses and the resources for Portuguese language education, Zhao Wei, rector of the public university, said on Wednesday.
Asked by reporters about some media reports last month saying that the university planned to reduce its elective Portuguese language courses for non-Portuguese majors in the next few years, Zhao pointed out that the university was actually drawing up adjustments to the courses to improve their quality.
“For most students at the University of Macau, Portuguese is not their mother tongue. We’re carefully reviewing our methods used for Portuguese language teaching as there is quite a difference between teaching a Chinese student and a Portuguese student,” Zhao said.
“Not only local students, but also students from other places are interested in the Portuguese language,” Zhao said, pledging to provide “more and better Portuguese language courses”.
Chinese and Portuguese are Macau’s two official languages.
(Macanews/macaupost)
