BILINGUALISM IN

CONTEXT, A
CRITICAL ANALYSIS.
Examples of how bilingualism is carried out in Colegio San Bartolomé - La
merced in the low primary section.
By Felipe Álvarez Rodríguez MABA student.
Student's code: 2360076
1. COGNITIVE DIMENSION

In the school, students have good early cognition processes in L2.

It is said that due to the fact kids have bilingual parents and they get
exposed the children to bilingual contexts since they are little kids.
I agree with this because children have a process of person-language
bond, translating and language choice (Grosjean, 2001) as they happen to
like language and they are choosing how to use it; they recruit to
translation most of the time to interact with others and they select the
language to be used when they are to communicate with others. As this is
being promoted in kids since their early learning stages, there might be a
moment in which this L2 may substract the L1 turning it into a minor
language affecting the development of the child into a society (Baker,
2006) At school this could be enhanced by providing kids team work tasks
so early bilingual may aid the kids who struggle with language that way
oral communication and interaction is promoted simultaneously.

2. PEDAGOGICAL
DIMENSION
Kids are exposed to live experiences with people from different contexts.
I carried out a pen-pal experience in 2021 with third grade kids in Bogota,
with third grade students in Manizales.
This experience was accurate for the process of bilingualism as teachers
besides of achieving a learning objective, it is needed to identify how people
learn into the classroom (Tait, 2009) that said, even though we were under
the pandemic lockdown we were able to foster motivation in bilingualism
during online classes by making the learning process vivid besides the
situation we were going through back then. Unfortunately, we could not
continue developing this outstanding project as there was not much
commitement from teachers of both schools and we focused on retaking
habits for in-person classes. This project could be retaken as it promoted
simultaneous interaction among kids and not only because of it but also as
bilinguism is promoted although people do not meet any foreign person,
but they do meet people from another city and another culture.

3. LINGUISTIC DIMENSION

Kids learn the language from the interaction in both languages (L1 & L2) in
dual-language classes.
Kids at school take some subjects which are in dual-language that allows them
to get exposed as to L1 and L2 experiences.
I like this idea as the students are able to distinguish some language features
and they are challenged, it allows them to have complex tasks that permit the
understanding of descontextualized knowledge to be transferred from L1 to L2
(Cummins, 1978) As it may be considered a great opportunity to mix both
languages into the same class; it might turn into code-switiching as a moment
of inventing new words of either language or that way the speaker may be
considered as someone who does not have a good command of the language..
(Gómez, L. s.f) It is important to keep working on the understanding and usage
of both languages simultaneously in class allowing the use of 'translanguaging'
into the classroom.

4. EDUCATIONAL
DIMENSION

School is working under an innovation process with MAGIS curriculum and

Cambridge curriculum turning into a national bilingual school making learners
acquire a second language in contextual situations.
The school has been innovating on education processes using MAGIS curriculum
and combining with Cambridge curricula. As they are doing this innovative
process; kids have been requested to use L2 in communicative interactions among
them and with teachers.
This proposal of innovation in bilingual education has been appealing to me as
language must be learned in context in order to be used as a learning and
communication tool to express thoughts and opinions as inside as outside the
school (Coyle, 2010) Besides this, I do not agree on the second part as we have
other options such as translanguaging, being this concept the way bilinguals
make use of a set of repertoire in the linguistic traits at the moment of
communicating with others (Garcia and Lin, 2017) As for kids has been a bit hard
communicating and understanding L2 in classes the whole time, speacially in low-
primary School is still working on the adjustments of the curriculum and we may
include translanguaging at least for preschool and low-primary.

References:
Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism, 4th Ed. Multilingual Matters
Cromdal, Jakob. (2013). Bilingual and second language interactions: Views from Scandinavia. International Journal of Bilingualism. 17. 121-131. 10.1177/1367006912441415.
Grosjean, F (2001). Life with two languages. An introduction to bilingualism.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press Ch. 4 The bilingual child.
Niemeier, Susanne. (1999). A cognitive view on bilingualism and "bilingual" teaching and learning. Journal of English Studies, ISSN 1576-6357, Nº 1, 1999, pags. 165-186. 1.
10.18172/jes.48.
Pimentel-Velázquez, Cynthia & Pavón, Víctor. (2020). The Pedagogical Dimension and the Use of Materials in English-Taught Programs in Higher Education. 10.4018/978-1-
7998-2318-6.ch015.
Module: understanding bilingualism: definitions and cognitive development. Gómez, L. S.f.