Timeline about Colombian language policy

  • 1540

    Colonial and Independence Periods: Latin-Spanish Bilingualism

    1540-1810
    These
    institutions taught, mainly, males from wealthy Spanish families to read, write, and recite
    religious tracts in Latin.
  • Post-Independence Period: Spanish-French and Spanish-English Bilingualism

    1811-1886
    In this period, many
    language policies were created, but some of them were not implemented. One of these
    policies, launched in 1826, proposed to teach in primary and secondary schools Spanish,
    Latin, Greek, French, English, and one indigenous language
  • National Plan of Bilingualism 2004-2019

    2004-2019
    the main objective of the
    National Plan of Bilingualism was to attend to the
    particular bilingualism necessities considering the multiculturalism.
  • Program for Strengthening the Development of Competences in Foreign Languages 2010-2014

    2010-2014
    the aim of the PFDCLE was to help Colombian citizens
    develop communicative competencies in foreign languages, emphasizing English, in order to
    favor the insertion of Colombian human capital into the global knowledge economy and the
    international job market.
  • Law of Bilingualism (Law 1651 of July 12th, 2013)

    For this purpose, the objective of “developing communicative skills to read,
    understand, write, listen, speak, and express correctly in a foreign language, it was added to the general objectives of the
    elementary, secondary and high school levels of education.
  • Bilingual Colombia

    2014-2018
    t the program aims to achieve by 2018 that 35% of the Colombian eleventh graders from the public sector attain a B2 level, and 8% reach an A1
    level.
  • Colombia Very Well

    2015-2025
    The objective of the PNI (its acronym in Spanish) was that, by 2025, 50% of 11th graders achieve a B1 English Level. The plan also aims at impacting the English education at the university level and in productive sector (workers).
  • As a conclusion

    To sum up, Colombia has a long tradition in foreign languages instruction, especially
    French and English. Since 2004, the instruction of English has been prioritized through the
    launching of a bilingualism law and four national bilingualism plans