He Competent Bilingual In Puerto Rico By Alicia Pousada (Summary)

In this article, 30 individuals are selected in order to conduct an investigation, to define the factors, which contributed to their developed bilingual abilities. The level of bilingualism is thendivided into 5 groups: incipient bilingual, receptive bilingual, functional bilingual equilingualism or balanced bilingual and ambilingualism or perfect bilingual. Through out the article, we seethat the reason for which most of the sample individuals became fluent bilinguals was due to the type of institution they were in. Most of the individuals who were fluent were from private schools andhad decent exposure to a second language in their homes. Others mentioned that they increased their skills, by reading newspapers in English, television and amongst other English-speaking friends.As a result in this article, many of the tests members found that to be bilingual was a huge advantage, career-wise and promoted higher communication and peace. However, some would seek to avoidspeaking in both languages as to avoid being discriminated by monolingual speakers. Though all members that were used in the investigation said that they did not feel any less Puerto Rican by being acomplete bilingual.

In conclusion to the investigation, the members were asked what they would propose be done to improve second language acquisition in Puerto Rico. Many of the members’ respondedsaying that the methods of teaching English in schools should be improved and, to promote exposure to the language more often with helpful tools like books, magazines, videos and other forms toacknowledge the interest in the English language. In short the mastery of both languages in Puerto Rico is a great advantage, since it is quite rare to see this in other countries. The article clearlyidentifies the factor that contribute to the development of a bilingual, its consequences and advantages, but mostly establishes that it is an important trait to be a bilingual in Puerto Rico.