Interaction in a Bilingual classroom in a primary School at the Department of Quindío

Abstract

The main object of this research project was to be aware of how interaction is taking place in a bilingual pilot process in a public institution in the department of Quindío. Starting out with the observation of several bilingual classes with students of 4th and 5th grade it was possible to conclude that the bilingual pilot process in this institution is very immature. Nonetheless, teachers and students are making a huge effort for making this pilot process works. Besides, it was possible to establish that code switching is vital at the time of expressing any kind of speech in the second language as it is the body language, and the non-linguistic resources. This study was carried out with 72 students of a bilingual public institution taking all the data through the use of surveys for the teachers and the students and also several observations which gave important information for making strong conclusions. In this way was possible to find out that code-switching is one of the most common strategies used among teachers and students for expressing ideas and for clarifying instructions. Furthermore, the use of the mother tongue plays a very important role since despite the efforts of the teachers for fostering the use of the second language the students keep using their mother tongue as the main source of communication among them. In addition, the outcomes also showed that body language is essential for teachers and for students because this is the way that the two of them use for clarifying the ideas they want to express. Finally, it is remarkable to say that although teachers are making huge efforts for enhancing the linguistics skills in their students the results are not the best ones and teachers need to find another strategies and methodologies for fostering the communication in the second language inside the bilingual classes.