Bilingualism

This topic of bilingualism in Colomibia and strategy of improving the quality of education proposed by the Ministry of National Education, it seems very important because English is the official language of the globalized world we are living. Behold, the main reason why it is important, the  English   has several implications especially in the workplace, knowing this language makes us more competitive in  the  an ever evolving world.

 But before of get this goal,  I think there is much work because to achieve this goal you must first train all teachers, we see that the educational reality that exists in many contexts is very basic and most teachers do not know  this lenguage, although are not  licensed in this language and they   have knowledge of the matter, they teach their students without knowledge of the specific area, teachers who do not know English language teaching mistakes of theirs students.

 So what are you teaching? and what  are learning students? this is a  reality we live in this  moment and I believe that to achieve this goal you must first provide the opportunity for all teachers, and also that poor people have access to and learn the language for free because people who want to learn with quality must pay and the other people are  learning with low to quality, limiting their  learning.

Colombia is a multilingual country. There are multiple cultures that speak indigenous languages spread all around the Colombian territory. According to Ardila (2006) there is great richness in the country linguistic diversity. Besides Spanish, there are more than 60 indigenous languages, two Creole and more than 12 families have been identified, there are also some independent languages and some that have not been classified.

Different Views of Bilingualism Nevertheless, high socio-economic classes have a different perspective on what bilingualism is in Colombia. They consider themselves bilingual because they speak a foreign language, English for the most, and they want their children to become bilingual even at the cost of losing part of their own culture. The purpose of this paper is to present that there is a majority of the population who is becoming bilingual at the cost of their own culture, both in the population who wants to learn English, as well as in the indigenous population who wants to learn Spanish.

Bilingualism as an AssetBased on the premise that the possession of symbolic resources, such as certain highly valued types of linguistic skills, cultural knowledge and specialized skills, helps to attain access to valuable social, educational and material resources, many parents of the higher socio-economical classes from Colombia, choose bilingual education for their children. Most of the time, they chose English as a highly valued language.

Bilingual Education in Colombia Grimm's KindergartenThere are many examples of schools that offer bilingual education. Grimm’s Kindergarten is a nursery school that teaches English to its students beginning at the age of three. This is a very controversial age at which to start learning a second language. Many authors may argue that it is important to have a solid foundation in the mother tongue before starting the process of learning a second language. In spite of the controversy, many parents choose this school so that their children will have access to a bilingual school later.

Education for the Indigenous CommunitiesBased on this same premise, many indigenous people have learned to speak Spanish thus losing part of their cultural identity. In a recent interview observed in class, an indigenous person from the Huitotos was explaining how, in the last few years, people who are 30 or younger understand the Huitoto language but do not speak it. They only speak Spanish. Situations like this may eventually lead to language death, and since language is so closely related to culture, the latter will be lost too.

Dead LanguagesAccording to the UK Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) (Crystal, 2000) a language dies when nobody speaks it. If the situation of the Huitotos continues with the same tendency, pretty soon only few elders will speak it and when the last one dies, the language will die too.

Bilingualism and Better OpportunitiesBilingualism is closely related to ‚Äúhigh quality‚Äù education. Parents who seek better education and wish to send their children to study abroad, tend to choose bilingual schools for them. They believe that having a second language will facilitate access to better universities abroad. As for indigenous communities, the state has not provided bilingual education for them. If they want to go to school, they study in Spanish. This is very dangerous in the case of languages that lack alphabet, because there is no possibility of having written texts and the only ‚Äúlearning language‚ becomes Spanish. Although the circumstances of the children who attend private bilingual schools in the big cities of Colombia and the indigenous children who attend public schools in far away regions is quite different, there might be some similarities behind the reasons for them to attend that kind of education. In both cases parents are seeking for better opportunities and there is a language with higher status. In the case of the indigenous children, Spanish has a higher status, in the case of the upper class children, a foreign language, which is usually English, has a higher value. The difference is that in the case of the upper class students, there may be situations of additive bilingualism in which the acquisition and learning of a foreign language is useful for future opportunities.

On the other hand, for the indigenous children the situation is the opposite. The minority home language is seen as low status, and being bilingual may be associated with feelings of inferiority. This may lead to a loss of cultural identity. The latter case is called subtractive bilingualism and is often associated with submersion education where a minority language speaker has to  be at school without any support
 http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/colombia

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