Portuguese as an Additional Language and cybersecurity: a pilot course

Abstract

This article describes the asynchronous module of the 2021 pilot course of Portuguese as an Additional Language (PAL) and cybersecurity offered through the Language Learning Center at the University of Washington and funded by the U.S. GenCyber grant. This grant is offered through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The 2021 Portuguese GenCyber course was offered online in a summer camp format to two groups of high school students: Portuguese and Spanish speakers (either Heritage or Second Language Speakers). Our intention is to demonstrate the significance of the field of language for specific purposes (LSP) in relation to cybersecurity and particularly the importance of Portuguese in this field. We explain in detail the organization of the asynchronous module of the pilot GenCyber course and its differentiated tasks, which comprised approximately 20 hours of students’ coursework completed in 3 weeks. The asynchronous module presented here could be replicated and/or adapted to other Portuguese courses as well. We finish the article with some of the results of the evaluation of the GenCyber program and some of the conclusions from the site visit to the program. This Portuguese GenCyber course is also a reminder of the possible role of Humanities in the development of special topic courses in languages, embracing the diversity of our student populations and the potential to apply their language skills to professional careers in high demand, as in the case of cybersecurity.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56515/PLJ562476673