DEBATABLE QUESTION ACTIVITY

Santiago’s question: As Colombia is looking forward to be a bilingual country, Should public schools increase the number of hours of English in school as private schools do since second graders? 
OUTLINE

Thesis: 

One of the main issues which teachers have to deal is to manage in short English class’s time what the Ministry of National Education (MNE) demands.

Supporting arguments:

• There is not enough time for doing a real cover for learning a language.
•  Short time class doesn’t let teachers to carry on long activities.
• Most of the task are based on vocabulary and grammar and not on producing the language.
• Teacher tend to be dependent on students’ book.

Opposing arguments:

• Teacher methodologies can deal with this problem

Conclusion: 

If MNE wants bilingual people it is important to make a change on curriculums demanding more quantity of English class for making students realized the real importance that English and being bilingual have.

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One of the main issues which teachers have to deal is to manage in short English class’s time what the Ministry of National Education (MNE) demands. The MNE has stipulated some special achievements for every grade, as well as, they has demanded that by the time when students get graduate, they have to be able to speak in English, or at least, having reach a B1 level in English (according to the Common European Framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment, it is an intermediate level).  

Nevertheless, most of the students from high school have a poor English proficiency, most of the time because teachers did not cover all what they were needing to teach, because of the low hourly intensity.  There is not is no enough time, it makes difficult to carry out all the activities necessaries for developing students language skills.

Another important thing is, as the time is limited, what many English Teachers do is to be too much dependent to the student book, they tend to be focus on teaching grammar, and vocabulary. And sometimes, they do listening activities. But those activities which requires to use the language, as speaking and even writing, would be affected because there is no time for long activities. So, currently time of English in public Schools have just let students get a superficial knowledge about the language.

Thus, if MNE wants bilingual people it is important to make a change on curriculums demanding more quantity of English class for making students realized the real importance that English and being bilingual have.