Date: Nov. 2, 2020

Source: Macao Daily

Author: Niu Yinhu

JNU's Portuguese course has run for three semesters and trained more than 150 students, over half of them from Macao. It is organized by JNU's Center for Macaology and jointly sponsored by the Macau Foundation, Macao's Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, and JNU's Macao Alumni Association. 

（Prof. Ye Nong）

（Students in Portuguese class）

Prof. Ye Nong, the project leader and main promoter, director of JNU's Center for Macaology, said he hoped this course could extend the Portuguese teaching platform to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, promoting the spread of the language there.  

The Portuguese course was set up after the Center for Macaology was founded at the end of 2017 when the Outline Development Plan for the Greater Bay Area and the Belt and Road Initiative's strategic conception was proposed. In August, the Macao Foundation and other institutions reached agreement that the Center for Macaology would offer Portuguese classes for the development of Greater Bay Area. The first Portuguese class was given on Panyu campus, with over 50 students admitted, Macao students first.

In the second semester, since the course was increasingly popular among students from Macao and others, it was expanded to two sections. 

(Han Tiange, the guide of JNU's Portuguese course)

If Prof. Ye is the pioneer of JNU's Portuguese course, Han Tiange is its guide. In the initial phase, I teach through the comparison and contrast among Chinese, Portuguese and English, she said, especially in teaching grammar and some difficulties to make students understand such a familiar and strange language.”