English as a Neutral Language in the Colombian National Standards: A Constituent of Dominance in English Language Education

This article attempts to problematize the way the English language is used in official documents. We will focus on the "Estándares Básicos de Competencias en Lenguas Extranjeras: Inglés" (Basic Standards of Competences in Foreign Languages: English), a handbook issued by the Colombian Mini...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Carmen Helena Guerrero Nieto, Álvaro Hernán Quintero Polo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2009-10-01
Series:Profile Issues in Teachers' Professional Development
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11447
Description
Summary:This article attempts to problematize the way the English language is used in official documents. We will focus on the "Estándares Básicos de Competencias en Lenguas Extranjeras: Inglés" (Basic Standards of Competences in Foreign Languages: English), a handbook issued by the Colombian Ministry of Education. We deem it as a vehicle used to spread a hegemonic and ideological influence and to alienate teachers' beliefs and practices within English language education. To be concise, here we discuss only neutrality as one broad category that emerges in our close examination of how the English language is constructed within the handbook. In this paper, we construct our main points around three forms of neutrality: prescription, denotation, and uniformity.
ISSN:1657-0790