UNIVERSIDAD
DEL VALLE
ESCUELA
DE CIENCIAS DEL LENGUAJE
LICENCIATURA
EN LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS
COMPOSICIÓN
EN INGLÉS I
PERSONAL
WRITING PROYECT
NATALIA
GONZÁLEZ ORTIZ
COD:
0937327
Bilingual Books, a tool to
improve our bilingual processes in the Colombian School
Right now the
country is developing a National Plan of Bilingualism that seeks to develop
bilingual Colombian
citizens; meaning that they “will be able to communicate through English with
internationally comparable standards”. But the question of the English teachers
and learners are far away than the ability of communicate: ¿How can we develop
a bilingual student with the texts we use? ¿Are our resources enough to
encourage that process? The answer is no for most of them. But ¿how can we
change this? Solutions must be presented and applied.
Most of the
texts we use in the English Classroom are completely written in English, there
is no place for the mother tongue that in this case is Spanish. This idea comes
from the fact that the mother tongue should be avoided when we are teaching another
language. However, Freeman et al., (2011) said that students should be able to
draw upon all their linguistics sources while they learn. The meaningful help
of having another language will help them to enhance the new one. Moreover,
another false assumption is the believe that all bilinguals should be balanced.
In this case we need to take into account that every person uses the languages
they know for different purposes as Grosjean (2010) said “most bilinguals use
their languages for different purposes, in different situations, with different
people”. We may teach students English during their educational process but we
cannot assure they are going to be fully independent English speakers with the
same level as their mother tongue.
Another believe
that could interfere with the use of bilingual books is the translation. It is assumed
that if you gave to students the text in English and in Spanish it would not
help them during their process of learning another language. Against this
thought, Cummins (2007) said that translation promotes biliteracy development
when students write and translate their own books. Translations should not be
seen as an enemy; in fact it is an allied that promotes reading as a tool to
increase our knowledge in another language.
As we have seen
so far, bilingual books have some non believers, but the purpose of this text
is to present a possible material that could help our Colombian English
students to enhance their English language learning process. Now on, we are
going to talk about the types of bilingual books, their uses and a possible proposal
for our Colombian schools.
First of all I would tell you that this is an interesting topic to develop. Now I think there's something missing because at the end I found the phrase "Now on, we are going to talk about the types of bilingual books, their uses and a possible proposal for our Colombian schools", so I believe you're going to complete that idea. Then, I've noted that you say your purpose is "to present a possible material that could help our Colombian English students to enhance their English language learning process"but what I believe you are doing in your text is to show to the readers that there is a possibility to have bilingual books that can be written in English as well as in Spanish. Finally, I think I have not found the information about the intended audience and probably it would be good if you make emphasis on why this topic is important fo the academic field because as I've already said this is a really interesting topic to write about.
ReplyDeleteThank you and you're right, I only did this first draft with the main objectives that the professor told us. I'm starting to write about the types of books, their uses and present a possible proposal with bilingual books for our Colombian schools. I'm glad you like it and I'm going to make emphasis on the intended audience.
ReplyDeleteThank you
Pd: between me & u my friend, we're being very polite. I like it