Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

My experience as a Portuguese teacher in an international school in São Paulo, Brazil, includes the use of songs as a didactic resource, not only for language skills development, but mainly to motivate students, promote interaction, and value each individual’s culture. Being one of the teachers in charge of coordinating a Community Service at school, oriented to the teaching of Portuguese for refugees (a pilot project organized by a group of teachers and High School students), I decided to design a program in which the learning of Portuguese is facilitated by the sharing of experiences on autobiographical memories involving songs. The background for this program is my research on Neuroscience and Education, focusing on the relations between Music, Memory, and Identity, due to the importance of music in our lives – in our mother tongue or in a second/ third language – in different ages, including moments of pleasant or tough life experiences. By valuing refugees´ culture, and interacting in an environment of shared experiences, we believe, the language acquisition, and more importantly, the integration to a new context, will be stimulated and facilitaded. This will be an important part of the project (still in the early stage), and an experimental research will be developed during the process. Refugee’s applications have been sent to us by AMIS – Morumbi´s Association for Social Integration, in São Paulo. We also have the support of ADUS, an important NGO in Brazil that assists refugees in their reintegration.