IPM eyes Portuguese learning platform

The Macau Polytechnic Institute (IPM) and universities from Portugal and Beijing are preparing to launch a “very important platform” for teaching Portuguese, the visiting dean of Lisbon University, António Sampaio da Nóvoa, said on Monday.
Quoted by Portuguese news agency Lusa, Nóvoa said the proposal came from the Chinese vice-minister of education Hao Ping, who wanted to double the number of Chinese institutions offering Portuguese to 30 “within two or three years”.
The platform assumes “there will be a space for teacher training and a space for interchange and work,” he said.
The dean added that the new programmes will also allow universities to exchange school books aimed at facilitating teaching of Portuguese in China.
Universities from Brazil and Angola would probably join the three founding institutions later, he said.
Nóvoa was speaking on the sidelines of the opening of the MPI new doctoral programme in Public Administration and Portuguese Language and Culture.
He also announced that MPI president Lei Heong Iok would receive an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Lisbon.
“I think this is the first time that we’ve granted it to a Chinese individual and therefore it is a particularly important moment, of great academic symbolism,” he said.
In addition, the Beijing Foreign Affairs University of Economics opened a new centre for studies of Portuguese-speaking countries that will develop projects of historical research and contemporary studies.
The new centre’s goal is to “promote friendship, cooperation and exchange between China and the Lusophone countries, with the best support from experts and scholars from mainland China and taking advantage of Macau as a platform,” the university said in a statement.
Former Chinese vice minister of commerce Wei Jianguo and the university’s dean Shi Jianjun are the honorary presidents of the centre, which will be headed by Wang Chengan, former secretary general of the Macau Forum for Economic Cooperation and Trade between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.