Educação bilíngue no Brasil: promovendo encontros em busca de altos níveis de proficiência linguística e acadêmica

Abstract

Bilingual Education has spread out quickly through Brazil in the last decades, as an answer to the demands of a global society that requires from its members the ability to interact in multiple contexts. However, this modality of education is still in its initial construction phase, in need of legal regulations and a clear theoretical basis to support it. This research comes from this need of discussing guiding parameters for bilingual education in Brazil and has as its main objective to reflect upon the bilingual education phenomenon, pointing to theoretical-methodological approaches appropriated to its purpose. In order to reach this goal, this exploratory and bibliographical research was organized, in which national and foreign researchers were brought to the table, as Krashen (1982), Swain (1985), Leffa (1988; 1999; 2012), Baker (2001), Lyster (2007, 2012), Cummins (2009), García (2009), Moura (2009), Malone (2012) and Grosjean (2013). As results we gather that: 1 – 21st-century citizens must be able to communicate and interact in every context, in their first and additional language, through technologies and scientific knowledge, building their own culture and respecting other cultures, acting autonomously, and developing their socioemotional skills, in their interaction to themselves and toward others; 2 – Bilingual education has the role of forming this citizen, through the development of linguistic and academic proficiency, as well as multicultural awareness and, to do so, must organize appropriated pedagogical experimentations; 3 – National Curricular Guidelines for Plurilingual Education, currently in the way to be homologated, represent an important historical milestone towards bi/plurilingual education normalization in our country, bringing advancements and challenges to this segment.