Learning on the Ground—Taking Language and Culture Teaching Outside the Classroom

Pedro Miguel Branco Caeiro

doi:10.53941/sala.2026.100009

Abstract

Learning a language can’t be a process limited to the classroom, since it demands additional practice. That additional practice can be achieved through activities designed by the teacher, ensuring that they are consistent with the course curriculum. By practicing outside the classroom, the students should feel more motivated, since they are taking charge of their own learning and becoming more autonomous. If those activities are made into games, the students might feel even more engaged, as the learning process will be more entertaining for them. In order to take advantage of Macau’s role as a place where Portuguese culture is present in everyday life, the students of the Bachelor of Portuguese at the City University of Macau were challenged to find manifestations of that culture outside the classroom, on a playful activity that should, therefore, be more motivating for them. On a previously set meeting point, the students’ teams were given a list of instructions in Portuguese, with varying levels of complexity, according to the year they were enrolled. This activity ensured that the students were practicing the Portuguese language, as they were required to follow the instructions and decode some intentionally less clear information. By including elements of the Portuguese heritage in Macau, making the students go to those places and focusing the questions on information about that heritage, the activity enables students to also learn something about the culture associated with the language they are learning. To assess that learning, the students were asked to answer a test on their knowledge about some of the cultural elements in question before and after the activity was conducted and the results of those tests are presented at the end of this article, along with a student’s evaluation of the activity.

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