Translating the CercleS European Language Portfolio into Portuguese for plurilingual development in a Community of Practice

Abstract

Abstract In this paper plurilingual and autonomy building activities are described with reference to the CercleS European Language Portfolio and some parts of the original Council of Europe Language Portfolio. For this extracurricular plurilingual learning project in Portugal, eight secondyear female students studying for a degree in Executive Secretarial Studies voluntarily formed a Community of Practice by taking part in some introductory workshops and regular meetings in order to gain familiarity with the official but userfriendly nature of the European learning tool. Their translation proposals in Portuguese covered two parts, one from each of the official organisations, and specifically: (i) the general introduction to the European Language Portfolio and (ii) the introduction to the language passport (CercleS 2002), accompanied by a written reflection on their individual development. Subsequent workshops focused alternately on ongoing expansion of the participants' language horizons and on specific Portuguese expressions for appropriateness of register, accessibility, syntactic and lexical tuning. The results are reported as an illustration of the importance of this kind of activity as a contribution towards the development of plurilingual competences, growing autonomy and selfconfidence, and using a complete language toolkit within a Community of Practice.