Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos launched a new program called “Colombia Very Well,” on Thursday, with the intention of promoting bilingualism in Colombia.
According to a press statement released by the Office of the Presidency, the program is intended to promote bilingualism in Colombia, stating, “Today, only 9,000 high school graduates have an intermediate level of English. Our goal is to increase that number to 185,000 in ten years.”
In addition to promoting English among students, the project also aims to mobilize workers in the private and public sectors with the knowledge of English, and to strengthen a culture that values bilingualism as part of education.
The bilingualism initiative is slated to include immersion programs in San Andres – an English/Spanish-speaking island-state of Colombia northwest of the mainland – and in other countries with the creation of phone and tablet apps, in addition to delivering six million English textbooks to facilitate the program, according to Santos.
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This policy is intended to be one of the highlights of the Santos educational policy in his second term, according to Colombian economic newspaper La Republica.
Sources
- Santos lanzará hoy el programa nacional de inglés ‘Colombia Very Well’ (La República)
- Presidente Santos lanzó el Programa Nacional de inglés “Colombia, very well” (Presidencia de Colombia)
