Sara Gonçalves dos Santos, a PhD student from the Department of Portuguese , Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau (UM), recently completed an oral defense for her paper titled ‘The Oral Performance of Chinese Language Speakers Who Are Learners of European Portuguese as a Foreign Language: Effects of Increasing the Cognitive Complexity of the Task’ (Desempenho Oral de Falantes de Língua Materna Chinesa, Aprendentes de Português Europeu Língua Estrangeira: efeitos do aumento da complexidade cognitiva da tarefa). The defense received unanimous approval from the Examination Committee. The paper focuses on an innovative study in the area of applied linguistics and the result is expected to be applied in Portuguese language teaching at UM.

The supervisors of the student are Maria José Grosso, director of UM’s Chinese-Portuguese Bilingual Teaching and Training Centre, who is also an associate professor from the Department of Portuguese; and adjunct professor Ana Paula Cleto. The paper studies the effects on the oral expression of Portuguese learners whose mother tongue is Chinese when the task’s cognitive complexity increases.

Members of the Examination Committee included UM Vice Rector (Research) Rui Martins, Prof Luísa Ortiz Alvarez from the University of Brasília, Prof Rosa Bizarro from Macao Polytechnic Institute, Assistant Professor Roberval Silva and Prof Ana Nunes from the Department of Portuguese, as well as the two supervisors of the student.