Facultad de Educación - Maestría en Infancia

This research emerged from the need to consolidate a meaningful bilingual methodology for children from three to five years of age from low socioeconomic backgrounds belonging to the public education system, where they could start learning English and Spanish by means of a bilingual methodology that provides them with the same opportunities as middle to high class children. Its aim is to lead Colombia through the path of a more egalitarian education, where inequality could be eradicated, where children can have greater educational opportunities. Hence, through the implementation of this sequential bilingual methodology in various Colombian public Early Childhood Development Centers - ECDCs (Centros de Desarrollo Infantil - CDIs), awareness could be raised and eventually contribute to the modification of the actual Colombian bilingual policy so to include early childhood. Likewise, it will provide children with new opportunities to develop higher cognitive and neuronal skills that can maximize their academic performance throughout their school years. As a result, a sequential bilingual methodology implementation was carried out in a public Early Childhood Development Center - ECDC (Centro de Desarrollo Infantil - CDI) in Pereira (Risaralda-Colombia) based on the bilingual methodological proposals portrayed by Rodao (2011) and Arias, Atehortúa, Chacón, Giraldo, Tamayo, Velez, & Vidal (2015) for preschoolers. This qualitative investigation is a descriptive case study, which depicts and systematizes the most predominant methodological techniques used when teaching English at public Early Childhood Development Center - ECDC (Centro de Desarrollo Infantil - CDI) and interprets their effectiveness based on the data collected from surveys, interviews, observations and field notes, as well as early childhood teachers, researchers, English teachers and parents' perceptions towards the implementation. Notwithstanding, in this article, the results regarding the necesary conditions to effectively spark the language acquisition process through the implementation of songs and story tales during English lessons in the early years will be displayed.

This research arose from the need to consolidate a meaningful bilingual methodology for children from three to five years of age from low socioeconomic backgrounds belonging to the public education system, where they could begin learning English and Spanish by means of a bilingual methodology that provides them with the same opportunities as middle to upper class children. Its aim is to implement an Early Sequential Bilingual Methodology Model in a public Early Childhood Development Center - ECDC (Centro de Desarrollo Infantil - CDI), and to collect data from class observations, student’s responses, early childhood teachers’ and English teachers’ views as well as parents’ perceptions towards its methodology and implementation in order to consolidate the model. Likewise, it will provide children with new opportunities to develop higher cognitive and high order thinking skills that can maximize their academic performance throughout their school years. This present Early Sequential Bil...