Silvia Ramos Sollai

Sílvia Sollai is a professional in languages with a 30-year experience in teaching and curriculum mapping English, Portuguese, Italian, and French in Brazil, Italy, and France. In the U.S., Sílvia has taught 1000 to 5000-level courses, including Intensive Portuguese for Spanish speakers, intermediate and advanced levels of reading, writing genres and composition at Florida State University and at Florida Mechanical and Agricultural University.
Sílvia has also worked as the K-12 Portuguese programs curriculum specialist and project coordinator of the Portuguese Acquisition Linkages (PAL) Project, a University of Georgia’s Portuguese Flagship Program (PFP) initiative in collaboration with high schools, community colleges, teachers’ organization, the Department of Education, and the Brazilian Consulates to locate and to foster Portuguese language teaching from elementary immersion programs through post-secondary study, with a special focus on secondary school standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Sílvia Sollai was in charge of PAL’s four deliverable objectives – 1) a Portuguese Program Survey with quantitative and qualitative questions asked to 117 schools nationwide about Portuguese language and Lusophone culture instruction, material selection, professional development, capstone courses, number/ background/ biodata of teachers and students, language and culture integration, technology use; 2) a replicable Year 1 curriculum framework with unit themes and sample map based on the accurate picture of  Portuguese language teaching in U.S. from the survey; 3) Teacher Retreats and training on proficiency-driven programs focusing on the deficiencies detected in the survey; and, 4) the recruitment of students to the Portuguese Flagship Program (a -+U$ 26,000/year scholarship to Brazil) at ACTFL Intermediate Mid (ILR1) to Advanced Low (ILR2) levels of proficiency. Sílvia has found there are 10,000 students taking Portuguese in the U.S. currently.
Sílvia is a Doctor of Philosophy in Education. Her degree is from the Curriculum and Instruction Program of the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University. Her doctoral dissertation "Reading the World beyond the Word: The Enactment of the Culture of Reading in English-Portuguese Biliterate Settings" describes how the early childhood biliteracy process evolves around home, community, and school at an English-Portuguese 60:40 Dual Immersion Program.
Sílvia acquired her Master’s Degree at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie in Brazil. Her thesis is about the 600-hour/year intensive Portuguese as a Second Language course for graduates Silvia thoroughly designed and administered. Before that, Silvia acquired a graduate level Specialist Degree in Translation and Interpretation with a 416-hour course load. Her thesis is on puns in animated films subtitles. Her Bachelor’s Degree focused on interface languages (Portuguese and Spanish) perception of verb tense, aspect and mode.
All in all, this is the summary a lifetime dedicated to being informed by the latest schools of thought in order to design work that will incite the love for learning to communicate in a second language in students.
Supervisors: Dr. Marcy Driscoll and Dr. Peggy Sharpe