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Name: Laura Carolina Benavides Orduz

Course: Colombian Education

Group Number: 551035_1

Date: 16/07/2020

Is Colombia really a bilingual country?

To begin we must understand what bilingualism is, bilingualism is the ability of a subject to

communicate in two different languages or languages independently managing total fluency.

According to Weinreich (1974: 69) Bilingualism is considered to be the “process of using two

languages alternately”, and M.Siguan and Wmackey (1968: 34) also say that a bilingual person

“is one who, in addition to the competence they possess in His first language presents a similar

competence in another that he can use with similar effectiveness.

If we think about it, the truth is no term far from reality because we are beings who always use a

mother tongue that, when learned naturally, is our first language and the second independent of

the language that is learned with the same fluency as the mother tongue. be made our second

language.

But to be honest, understanding a foreign language does not automatically make you bilingual, in

English, for example, you need to handle the writing, speaking, listening and reading that are

fundamental or its foundations. But if we go back to the Colombian Society we have education

policies that mainly emphasize English, thus demonstrating that it is the language in which the

country is expected to have a bilingual way apart from Spanish as a mother tongue.
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But the policies to teach this second language are not as equitable as it is believed, the schools of

Colombia are divided into four types, which national or international bilinguals have the

possibility to travel abroad in exchange or to have teachers whose mother tongue is the foreign

language that is learned here so it is a good opportunity if you have the economic capacity, but

when we talk about schools with hourly intensity the teachers are Colombian and their

bilingualism goes back in what they have learned to teach and not in their management 100% of

the language, many examples are teachers who are suddenly not qualified but being a primary or

a private preschool. In these cases, the teacher must dictate their materials in English and goes

back to only learning their content in this language without actually knowing this language. But

the ones that are definitely the clear example that learning a foreign language is not synonymous

with being bilingual are public schools, here in Colombia they are very abandoned and classes

are not spoken in English but in the mother tongue, therefore that is, it is taken as if Spanish is

the language that the school wants to highlight, and English becomes just a subject where for an

hour 2 or 4 times a week basic things are taught that a student can use for basic without

emphasizing things that can serve you for real life in a foreign country.

Being bilingual becomes a basic tool to obtain great opportunities for surgery or to increase our

knowledge or why not our economy. This is actually an absolute fault since if the world speaks a

single language it would be easier, and in fact, this is what We owe it to the culture because

although we and the Mexican example speak Spanish, our dialect or words can have different

meanings and still be a small obstacle. If we make a list of the institutes that offer English in

Colombia, the list would be extensive, although not all of us share this language for pleasure, for

an obligation or need, a clear example is when we are students and they offer us a scholarship

abroad and it is due Having knowledge of English, we who do not know anything about the
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language and study in a public school see those little words "must have knowledge of English"

automatically becomes a huge problem and we automatically refuse the opportunity to accept

that scholarship or job in case that he offers us one and the requirement is also English.

In conclusion, bilingualism will be promoted in Colombia but we are not really capable of being

bilingual, we understand what they are saying but we have not yet managed the level b1 or more

that the M.E.N wants according to its latest foreign language education policy. There are still

many shortcomings, which is why we cannot consider ourselves bilingual the first time that we

manage our native language too much. For this reason, understanding or learning a foreign

language does not make us bilingual if we cannot develop fluently in this new language.

Many languages may have similarities regarding their pronunciation, writing, and origin, such as

Latin and Spanish, but it does not mean that they are the same and that by meaning they are

words of this language, we are bilingual, bilingualism in my point of view goes further and Until

we are able to respond under pressure to something in a language other than the mother tongue,

we are not bilingual because this moment of pressure is when our brain is pressed more and

makes that bilingual interior come out or not.

REFERENCES

- Lopez Perez, M. (2014). DiNle. Retrieved 16 July 2020, from

http://dinle.usal.es/searchword.php?valor=Biling%C3%BCismo

- Salgado, A. (2019). Bilingualism and Bilingual Education [Video File]. Retrieved from

https://repository.unad.edu.co/handle/10596/25847
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