Constructing Programming Objects for Electronic Activities that Teach Portuguese Spellings to Spanish Speakers

Abstract

At the beginning of the present century, growth in the amount of published work on contrastive aspects of the Spanish language and of the Portuguese language was reported (Aparicio Viñambres, 2017). Within this work, research has observed linguistic interference of Spanish speakers‟ first language in their Portuguese spelling (Rocha & Altamirano Robles, 2017). Conversely, it has been asserted that Portuguese and Spanish false friends may give Portuguese speakers some trouble from different perspectives when they learn Spanish. One of these perspectives is orthography (Sastre Ruano, 2013). Furthermore, interest in the teaching of Portuguese idiomatic expressions to Spanish speakers (Rocha, 2014) and, conversely, in the teaching of Spanish idiomatic expressions to Portuguese speakers has been published. Within this realm, it has been argued that learning idiomatic expressions can help improve written communication when these are used spontaneously and this use results in fluency in communication (Lima & Ortiz Álvarez, 2012). Owing to the importance of Spanish speakers having control over their own Portuguese spelling when they write Portuguese text in general and expressions in particular, and of reducing the interference of the Spanish language in this use, different programming objects that use JavaScript syntax and that reflect contrastive aspects of the Portuguese language and of the Spanish language will be put forward. It is hoped that the content of these objects comes in useful in the construction of electronic activities that are used to teach Portuguese spelling to Spanish speakers in educational institutions.