ABSTRACT
To try to discuss developments in language education in Brazil is a complex enterprise. The very size of the country poses enormous difficulties for this task, in the sense that it is impossible to account comprehensively f or the huge range of language education contexts. To give some sense of all the areas involved, even, we would need to sample the range from the indigenous population schools in the rainforests to some very affluent schools in urban areas. We would need to cover contexts such as Portuguese as a mother tongue, English as a Foreign Language, German as a Second Language, Brazilian Indian languages, Spanish in bilingual contexts, Brazilian Sign Language, Portuguese as a Second Language and so on. One feature, however, would make this enterprise unique: few nations in the world share with Brazil such high levels of social inequality, and these are clearly mirrored in language education.
