Three U of A Students Win Portuguese National Competition

Photos Submitted

From left, Ben Sawyers, Nayeli Perez and Tyler Costello.

Three Portuguese Program students were selected as winners in the 2020 Portuguese National Competition, which was organized by the American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese.

In its first edition, the competition was created as a way to promote the teaching and learning of Portuguese in K-16 education institutions in the United States. College students were required to produce a short video in Portuguese with English subtitles focusing on the theme Portuguese: My present, my future.

Edvan Brito, assistant professor and director of the Portuguese Program, saw the competition as an opportunity for his students to think of ways to connect their foreign language skills with their career goals. With that in mind, he decided to include the video activity as a final project for both his Elementary Portuguese I and Portuguese for Spanish Speakers I classes.

Students in both classes worked either individually or in pairs and voted for the best video to represent their class in the competition.

At the end of the spring 2020 semester, the American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese released the results, confirming that the video produced by Ben Sawyers had finished in second place and the video produced by Nayeli Perez and Tyler Costello had finished in third place.

Their videos can be seen in the links below:

Ben Sawyers's video

Nayeli Perez and Tyler Costello's video