The colombian and chilean bilingual programs (2011 -2014) as portrayed by the online-press “El Espectador” and “La Tercera”

Abstract

This paper presents a research study that describes the manner in which the online-press websites ‘El Espectador’ from Colombia and ‘La Tercera’ from Chile have represented language policies related to the bilingual programs EODP ‘English Opens Doors Program’, and the ‘National Bilingual Program'. The corpus of this study is composed of the news reports published from 2011 to 2014; due to both countries facing social and political changes, marked by students’ protests, educational reforms, and a transition of political leaders during this period. Under those circumstances, there was a significant number of news reports that were analyzed following the principles of qualitative content analysis approach by Elo and Kyngäs (2007). Findings revealed that Colombia and Chile have been looking forward to becoming advanced and developed countries. Hence, they have been implementing different educational neoliberal policies focused on the training of the workforce, where English plays the main role as a valuable asset that assures opportunities for them to be fruitful and competitive countries worldwide, according to the different political authorities and entertainment celebrities; disregarding the adverse effects that neoliberal policies – like bilingual programs - bring to their countries. As the findings illustrate, during the last years the implementation of these policies have only achieved to expand more the social, cultural and economic gap already existing in both countries.