CAPÍTULO 1:BILINGUISMO

Bilingualism: For a better education

For the world in this time, to be bilingual is a necessity very essential and important in a global world.

The bilingualism is the use customary of two idioms in a same context.

However in some discussions about the bilingualism on education, we have talked as a external process, where is not just involve the learner but the society, the context, the culture, too.

But mainly of bilingualism, What does it mean to say somebody is bilingual?

A bilingual person is someone who speaks two languages. A person who speaks more than two languages is called 'multilingual' (although the term 'bilingualism' can be used for both situations). Multilingualism isn't unusual; in fact, it's the norm for most of the world's societies. It's possible for a person to know and use three, four, or even more languages fluently.

The People may become bilingual either by acquiring two languages at the same time in childhood or by learning a second language sometime after acquiring their first language. The use of a second language represents a better interaction with the other people, because us will can communicate better, learn of the others people, and we can have new opportunities for a job, because we are most competent. Owing to previous, for the education, the M.E.N. proposed a bilingualism plan, it has for a first objective that the people are qualified for communicate in English, for advance in the economy and the culture in our country. Therefore, about adquision of two languages in the article named  Bilingualism and the Brain from MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge) show us some information about the bilingualism as a mental process.

For explication about this process, the answer of this question is very important:

"Does a bilingual speaker represent each language in different areas of the brain?" and the first argument to give an answer was:

"One way to answer this question is to look at the effects of brain lesions on the processing of a bilingual's two languages. Brain lesions that affect one language and not the other would lead to the conclusion that languages are represented in different areas of the brain."

That doesn't mean that the acquisition of a first language is located in the right pole and the second language is located in the left pole of the brain or viceversa, it means that acquisition of the second language or foreign language needs to involve all the brain functions using images, sounds, and body activities.

For us like teachers, this information has to be clear, because, in order to make the learning process light for learners, we need to use different strategies to play with the knowledge and don't give all the responsibility to the context and the society. But, if the M.E.N. has some projects for improve the English level in the country; why the effects that wait the M.E.N. doesn’t make evident in the students?

Perhaps, the result only is evident with the time, but we think that a mistake in the execution that the bilingualism plan in the colleges, is the little connection with others subjects, because the English is only other subject, but it isn´t practical in our context. In sum, bilingualism isn't a danger either to the English language or to the bilingual speakers themselves. On the contrary, there are many advantages peer learning two languages to be more bilingual people.

“[…] However, as a recent article demonstrates (de Mejía & Tejada, 2002), several teachers in a school which was in the process of becoming bilingual ‘felt threatened by what they perceived as a loss of cultural identity. They feared that in the development of the project, the national culture . . . would be displaced or substituted by Anglo-Saxon culture' (de Mejìa & Tejada, 2002: 111). It has also been reported by teachers in binational schools that due to the immense prestige of US culture among middle and upper-class Colombians, some students in these type of schools have developed signs of cultural disorientation and anomie.”

This is one of the problems that present bilingualism  in some places of schools from Colombia. but we think that the kind of castilian, that is taught all schools,allows students to not forget our mother tongue, because is possible learning of two languages without aside a of other. Also the purpose of bilingualism is to enable intercultural for the benefit of society, not to be cause for concern to abandon a second, because many students and / orpeople from other countries will want to learn from our culture, but surely never forget their mother tongue

What do you think?

Bibiography

http://crl.ucsd.edu/bates/papers/pdf/from-meiti/32-Hernandez-Bates%20MIT.pdf

http://books.google.com.co/books?
hl=es&lr=&id=aNAhecncTBwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA48&dq=Bilingual+Education+in+Colombia+Towards+an+Integrated+Perspective&ots=BR-t4CGTt5&sig=MvHjfg-urr4UCDKXkEfGIxjqBgE#v=onepage&q=Bilingual%20Education%20in%20Colombia%20Towards%20an%20Integrated%20Perspective&f=false

BY: Carolina García Jaramillo, Andrea Salazar García, Kelly De las Aguas, Mary Luz Quiroz.