Challenging the Monolingual Bias in EFL Programs: Towards a Bilingual Approach to L2 Learning

Abstract

In this paper, I question the practice of reducing L2 learning (emerging bilingualism) to the acquisition of monolingual-like competence in the target language and advocate for L2 users/learners’ language capacities to be understood from a holistic bilingual approach. Here, I discuss the implications of allowing this monolingual bias to operate unchallenged as I examine the experiences/opinions of language learners and instructors from the English Language Department at a public university in Costa Rica, regarding what it means to learn a foreign language and to become a bilingual speaker. Thereafter, I consider the challenge of ridding language education programs of this pervasive monolingual bias so that ways are found to allow L2 users/learners to stop characterizing themselves as deficient speakers of their additional language.