António Macedo

Research interests: Portuguese as a foreign/heritage/second language, Portuguese literature and culture; foreign/heritage/second language acquisition; Intercultural Communication; Cultural Studies; Diaspora Studies

Education

PhD Student in Cultural Studies - Queen’s University, 2021-2025
M.A. in Portuguese as a foreign/heritage/second language - University of Minho (Portugal), 2015
Licentiate Degree in Portuguese and English (Teaching) at the University of Minho (Portugal), 2001

About

My name is António Macedo and I am a teacher. I fell into it almost by accident and now I can’t imagine doing anything else. I joined the Languages, Literatures and Cultures Department in 2013, after holding Teaching Appointments in English and Portuguese at different educational institutions in Portugal.  After having extensive experience in teaching foreign language acquisition to people from all walks of life, diverse backgrounds, and distinct outlooks on the world, I am now more intent in examining culture and diaspora in all its manifestations.

In my language classes, music is an integral part of the classes, as I believe it to be the ultimate vehicle of cultural identification of a people. I believe that using a language is primarily for communication, so students should first and foremost be able to improve their practical language skills in the classroom by incrementing communicative competencies. I maintain individualized interaction with my students by tracking and monitoring them closely. In my culture lectures, I try to integrate all types of multimedia applications to illustrate the course content in a fun, but also effective way, which will, hopefully, resonate with the students. I advocate that the instructor is the guide who will gradually, but ultimately, lead the learner to actively seek self-advancement and awareness of what is being taught, and develop independent output and reflection from the proposed research on a path to self-improvement, growth and mindfulness in an attempt to gain perspective on the wonderful differences between cultures.

Teaching

Professor Macedo teaches the following course(s):

PORT 103: Beginning Portuguese and Culture I
PORT 104: Beginning Portuguese and Culture II
LLCU 111: Introduction to Cultures