Abstract
This study seeks to examine how students' learning experiences are impacted in the acquisition of Portuguese as a World Language in secondary schools in the SouthCoast of Massachusetts. With the increase of English-Only in our schools, this study will assist in the deconstruction of the belief in a one only language in the region. The English-Only movement (Macedo, 2003) is killing students' cognitive domains, fostering social issues such as the School to Prison Pipeline, dropouts, and bullying, among others. In order to unpack this phenomenon, I will examine the current guilt of World Language policies within the framework of neoliberalism and its educational policies. In doing so, I will dissect the praxis of World Language policies within what some cultural decolonial intellectuals call colonialities (Quijano, 2000; Mignolo 2010). I also will analyze the impact of critical pedagogy in engaging youth and how it demands praxis of the cultural biases to challenge the eugenicists produced by World Language policies through student and teacher experiences (McLaren, 2007, p. 66); I will also examine the impact of racialized language policies on my own journey as a young female Azorean Portuguese; I will examine how the implementation of more transformative teaching strategies (Apple and Bean, 2007) may develop greater meaning to essentially eliminate the fears currently influencing students' high affective filters in the acquisition of a World Language (Kohonen, Jaatinen, Kaikkonen, and Lehtovaara, 2001). I will rely on qualitative approaches, specifically autobiography and pure textual analysis. By engaging in an autobiography and textual analysis, I will be able to unpack and grasp the overt and covert ideological issues involving the impact of World Language Education in the SouthCoast. Through the content presented within this research study, I claim that transformative teaching and learning strategies are essential in recognizing minority students' languages and cultures. In order to do this, public schools across the SouthCoast of Massachusetts must begin the implementation of dual-language programs, promoting the use and learning of English and another World Language side-by-side.