teaching portuguese language in the context of angola based on students' memory writing

Abstract

• This work focuses on the teaching and learning process of the Portuguese language in the context of Angola, a country with several national languages such as kikongo, kimbundu, and umbundu, but with Portuguese as the official state language. In schools, the relationship between the official language and the national languages is marked by a clash between what the student knows and what they should learn. This clash has consequences, including the silencing of both the language learned in the social and cultural groups to which the students belong, and reflections on the teaching practices of the official language in a multilingual country marked by a history of struggles of different kinds, including long confrontations against Portuguese colonial power, for the conquest of Independence. Narratives involving school education can be told from different voices and perspectives. It is important for us to engage in dialogue with students based on their memories of the Portuguese learning process. Our objective is to discuss the relationship between the teaching and learning of Portuguese and the history of Angola, based on students' written memories of learning to read and write at school. We ask: What does the writing of students' memories say about the teaching of Portuguese in Angolan schools? The search for answers involves a qualitative, exploratory approach grounded in discussions by authors such as Bourdieu (1996) on the language of the State and the function of the school, Binji (2013) on the history of Portuguese in Angola, and Biazzetto (2013) and Halbwachs (1990) on memory. Results point to a writing of memory marked by the effects of coloniality in the imposition of Portuguese and the devaluation of national languages, as well as by accounts of pedagogical practices aligned with Angola's history of violence and oppression, but also of resistance.