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French as new second language for the schools
French, on the other hand, was adopted as a subject for secondary school (compulsory for grades 10 and 11) at the end of the same decade after a visit of Colombia’s president to France. -
HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TEACHING IN COLOMBIA
Colombia has become in different transformations on social, politic and cultural fields, those changes affect the education and the way how has been looking also in that way the interests and advances on education taking in a count the policies. -
BEGINING OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
In 1826 there was a national official policy to establish mandatory subjects across all national public schools such as Spanish, Latin, Greek, French, English, and an indigenous language, the one with the most speakers depending on the region where the school was located. In that case the language was presented like an instrument to vanlelize and spreed their religion. -
Latin as a not oficial language for schools
This well-intended law did not have any practical effects and it was followed by a series of reforms that would inevitably lead to the progressive suppression of Latin, until its total extinction at the end of 1970. But also just studied on the monasteries for the priests preparation. -
British council manifest
But National goverment didn´t saw any changes in the student´s efficiency the methodology was not practical for them, and ten years later, in a report issued by the British Council, the conclusion was that the Ministry of Education had not stood foreign language policy for students, and its decisions were a result of political pressures rather than educational considerations (British Council as cited in de Mejía, 2012). -
NEW POLITICAL CONSTITUTION
It was not long before Colombia signed a political constitutional reform in 1991 that expressly provided, for the first time in Colombia’s history, an open recognition of all indigenous languages, and of the country’s multilingual and cultural richness; furthermore, there was an economic policy expansion and massive admission of imports (USA and Europe), which called for a need to improve the English level of students, and specially of their teachers. -
COFE PROJECT
In February 1991 the Colombian Framework for English (COFE) project was created to be carried out in four years not concluded until 1997, between the Government of the United Kingdom, via the British Council, and Colombia, for an improvement in the teaching of English. The COFE project had a grass-roots approach to propose changes in Bachelor degrees programmes for teachers, suggesting an increase in the number of hours of English, as well as the inclusion of a research component. -
NATIONAL BILINGUAL PROGRAMME
Ten years later, the Government once again, under the supervision of the British Council launched the Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo. Colombia 2004-2019. English as a foreign language for the development of competitiveness. A national programme spanning 15 years to expand the learning of English in schools and universities all across Colombia. -
Bilingualism law
This programme was boosted in 2013 when the Bilingualism Law Colombian congress, was enacted to modify 1994’s General Education Law. The programme however was not meeting its own standards and as a result the ministery create another version. -
Colombia very well
The government decided to stop and start afresh with a new budget 1.3 billion pesos for ten years in a flagship endeavour: Colombia Very Well! Programa Nacional de Inglés 2015-2025 (CVW). It seems, much to the surprise of teachers, researchers, students, and interested parties, that again CVW was not the right path, hence, after only five months from the implementation date, the Ministry of Education changed its mind and goals. The new programme is now called Colombia Bilingüe. -
Critics of the language learning programs
The British Council is clearly an institution supportive of British commercial and political interests. It has always had the goal of spreading the English language as far as possible and this has been for clear political and commercial reasons. Thus, what leads the programme is not the treatment of learning as a tool for social and personal empowerment, aiming to emancipate school and college graduates for social advancement, but to stock call centre franchises.
