Bilingual Education in South America

<p>The development of bilingual education in South America can be traced back to the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers in the 15th and 16<sup>th</sup> centuries when Catholic missionaries began their evangelisation of the indigenous peoples using local vernaculars as well as Latin Spanish and Portuguese. Traditionally debate on bilingual education has been conducted in two separate arenas: majority language contexts involving international languages such as English French Spanish and Portuguese and minority community contexts aimed at maintaining native Amerindian languages as well as the different Sign Languages of the South American Deaf communities.</p> <p>This book presents an integrated vision of bilingual education in six South American nations: three Andean countries Peru Ecuador and Colombia and three 'Southern Cone' countries Brazil Argentina and Paraguay. It includes work carried out in minority as well as majority language contexts referring to developments in the fields of indigenous Deaf and international bilingual and multilingual provision.</p>