Ponto De Encontro: Portuguese As a World Language

by Anna M. Klobucka, Clémence de Jouët-Pastré

Ponto de Encontro is the first Portuguese language textbook that gives the student the choice to learn either Brazilian or European Portuguese. While it seeks to emphasize commonalities, Ponto also highlights and preserves important differences in both vocabulary and grammar. This program provides an ample, flexible, communication-oriented framework for a beginning or intermediate student of Portuguese.

Genres: Language, Portuguese Literature

626 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 2007

About the author

Anna M. Klobucka holds an MA in Iberian Studies from the University of Warsaw (Poland) and a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University (1993). She taught at the Ohio State University and the University of Georgia before coming to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2001. At UMass Dartmouth, she teaches primarily Portuguese and Lusophone African literatures and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies. She served as Chair of the Department of Portuguese from 2003 to 2007. She is the author of The Portuguese Nun: Formation of a National Myth (Bucknell, 2000; Portuguese translation issued by Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda in 2006) and O Formato Mulher: A Emergência da Autoria Feminina na Poesia Portuguesa (Coimbra: Angelus Novus, 2009). She has co-edited the volumes After the Revolution: Twenty Years of Portuguese Literature 1974-1994 (Bucknell University Press, 1997), Embodying Pessoa: Corporeality, Gender, Sexuality (University of Toronto Press, 2007; Portuguese translation published in 2010 by Assírio & Alvim), and Gender, Empire, and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Her articles have appeared in Colóquio/Letras, Luso-Brazilian Review, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, Slavic and Eastern European Journal, and SubStance, among other journals. She was also the lead author of the first edition of Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language (Prentice Hall, 2007). She served as Vice-President (2003-04) and President (2005-06) of the American Portuguese Studies Association. In 2007, she was recognized as UMass Dartmouth's Scholar of the Year. She currently serves as Executive Editor of the open-access online Journal of Feminist Scholarship, published by the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at UMass Dartmouth.

Reviews

[Griffin Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Portuguese textbook that I used. I could also highly recommend this one, although I did not end up finishing the first four legs of the series (PORT 101, 102, 203, 204), but instead completed the first two and a bit of the third. I will probably pick this back up again as I am indeed interested in some Brazilian and Portuguese writers (such as Pessoa, de Assis, and Camões).

[Dusty · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the University of Texas's "new" first-year Portuguese language textbook, and, I was told by the program supervisor, it is a major improvement over whatever text the teachers there used previously. All I have to say to that is: Yikes! What junk the previous book must have been. My problem with Ponto de Encontro isn't its organization, though I agree with the other reviewer that it could have been better, but the fact that it tries so hard to be both "international" and "hip." The former is an admirable goal -- after all, Portuguese is spoken on at least three continents, and people studying the language may be doing so intending to visit any of those places -- but sidebars and occasional research projects don't really do justice to the African countries being slighted in favor of references to Portugal and Brazil. The latter, that is, the relentless attempt to be cool/hip/savvy, is just obnoxious. Give me an un-ironic textbook that clearly explains the concepts, integrates effective vocabulary and composition practice, and doesn't require me to do all this by way of (contrived) stories about (unapologetically heteronormative) romances between fictional characters. There has to be a better book.

[Leslie Hickman · Rating 1 out of 5]

so far I'm not too impressed with this textbook! The set-up is horrible, no explanations to anything! I've taken several languages with a variety of types of books and this is lame!

[Atabei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Minha língua materna é espanhol mas ainda que o livro é para estudantes que falam inglês, pude aprender bastante.

[Brian Chang · Rating 5 out of 5]

um bom recurso para aprender a lingua