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Period: 1540 to
Language Bilingualism Policies and Plans
During the colonial era, many schools and universities were established in the Nuevo de Reino de Granada. These institutions mainly taught men from wealthy Spanish families to read, write, and recite religious treatises in Latin. -
Period: to
Spanish-French and Spanish-English Bilingualism
Colombia has gone through a period of political instability since the state was in the process of consolidating; this impaired construction and use of all kinds of policies and plans. During this period, many language policies were invented, but many of them were not implemented. -
Obligatory Subject
The regime concluded that Spanish should be taught as a compulsory subject and used as a medium of instruction in each of the schools in the territory, which is why most schools started teaching both Latin and Spanish. the regime favored the teaching of other foreign languages, which led most schools to choose to teach English and French -
First try of Policy
One of these policies proposed to teach in primary and secondary schools Spanish, Latin, Greek, French, English, and one indigenous language, the one most spoken in the region where the school was located. -
New mandatory Subjects
English and French became mandatory to
graduate from secondary school -
Period: to
system of primary education
Francisco de Paula Santander designed a primary education system that consisted of establishing a school for each society of more than 30 families. These schools were intended to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, human rights, science, the arts, beliefs, and philosophy. Latin and the teaching of Latin continued to be provided in almost all the schools in the territory. -
Latin disappears
Gradually, Latin stopped being taught
in schools until its total extinction occurred in 1970 -
General Law of Education
In the Colombian context, the General Law of Education (Law 115) gave schools the right to teach only one foreign language. This provoked most Colombian schools to select teaching only English due to the international dynamics that were taking place -
Period: to
National Plan of Bilingualism
The primary objective of the National Bilingualism Project was to serve to Explain that the GNP had 3 lines of action: First, ethnic education consisting of offering indigenous societies bilingual education; second, the integration of flexible teaching models to regulate the teaching of foreign languages in “education for work and human development”; And third, the optimization of communicative skills in English in public and private schools and universities in the territory. -
Period: to
Program for Strengthening the Development of Competences in Foreign Languages
The PFDCLE gave continuity to the tactics proposed in the PNB and added others to strengthen English teaching in the area. MEN notes that the purpose of the PFDCLE was to help Colombian residents develop communication skills in foreign languages with an emphasis on English to facilitate the incorporation of Colombian human capital into the universal economy of understanding and the world of the union market support financially. -
Law of Bilingualism
Law 1651 of 2013 gave a more relevant role to the acquisition of a
foreign language in all levels of education in Colombia (elementary, secondary, high school, EDTDH, and higher education) prioritizing the teaching of English in the public educational institutions of the country without disregarding the wide variety of indigenous languages spoken in the national territory. -
Period: to
Bilingual Colombia
5 months after starting to use the PNI, the program was restructured and re-launched under the name "Colombia Bilingüe" (CB for its acronym in Spanish) to reflect the concept of bilingualism that the PNI has, as the name suggests says focused solely on English. -
Period: to
Colombia Very Well!
in 2014, the government launched the National Plan of English:
Colombia Very Well! 2015-2025 (PNI for its acronym in Spanish).he objective of the PNI was that, by 2025, 50% of 11th graders achieve a B1 English level. The plan also aims at imparting English education at the university level and in the productive sector (workers). However, this article focuses on the strategies and objectives established at the school level.