The project is based on two diagnosis applied to students and professors from Portuguese Higher Education Institutions (HEI), on academic inclusion of students from Portuguese Speaking African Countries (PALOP) in two institutions: the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal (2013) and ISCTE-IUL (2016). In both cases, it became clear that there is a need to adopt strategies and instruments to promote the inclusion of international PALOP students, namely to produce and test materials to deepen their linguistic-communicative skills, for academic purposes, in different varieties of the Portuguese language. On one hand, skills related to oral and written comprehension of European Portuguese used in Portuguese HEI; on the other hand, skills related to the oral and written production of texts required by academic activity, in any language and its respective varieties.  Previous projects developed at ISCTE-IUL and in other Portuguese HEI have confirmed these same needs, but without exploring the sociolinguistic backdrop that is central to this project.   The research-action project derives from two fundamental needs. First, to promote a deeper understanding on the communicative linguistic repertoires and skills of each student, through: a) recognizing the African varieties of the Portuguese language, and the sociolinguistic contexts of each country of origin; b) promoting a deeper knowledge on the differences between the schooling countries and the higher education country, considering the students’ previous school practices, over 12 years of schooling in Portuguese (either first language (L1) or second language (L2)). Second, to identify needs for more comprehensive and efficient responses of social and academic inclusion at different Portuguese HEIs in relation to these international students. Consequently, we aim contributing to a more efficient and sustainable internationalisation of the higher education system (also) through the Portuguese...