4. “Mix-up, or what´s now called Spanglish, was
the language we spoke for several years. There
wasn´t a sentence that wasn´t colonized by an
English word. At school, a Spanish word would
suddenly slide into my English like someone
butting into line. Teacher, whose face I was
learning to read as minutely as my mother´s,
would scowl but no smile played on her lips. …
Whenever I made a mistake, Teacher would
shake her head slowly, “In English, YU-LEE-
AH, there´s no such word as columpio. Do you
mean a swing?”
5. I would bow my head, humiliated by the smiles
and snickers of the American children around
me. I grew insecure about Spanish. My native
tongue was not quite as good as English, as if
words like columpio were illegal immigrants
trying to cross a border into another language.
But Teacher´s discerning grammar-and-
vocabulary-patrol cars could tell and send them
back”.
From “My English” by Julia Álvarez. American/Dominican writer
http://cor.to/8OqT
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6. Should our students be ashamed of using
their mother tongue in the English class?
Should we, as teachers, feel guilty when we
use L1 in the classroom or when we allow
our students to mix Spanish and the
target language?
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8. Our aim
Analyze “communicative competence” in the light
of the 21st century and in the context of the
teaching and learning of English in Argentina.
10. Look at this Indian boy who sells fans and
speaks several languages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PrleqeCAPw
An interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1foUmDN_wwo
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11. Plurilingualism
Plurilingual competence is the capacity to
successively acquire and use different competences
in different languages, at different levels of
proficiency and for different functions. The central
purpose of plurilingual education is to develop this
competence.
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