Instrumental function of a second language and bilingual education

Abstract

Even  though  in  bilingual  intercultural  education  the  learning  of  a  sec-ond language should fulfill an instrumental function together with the mother tongue, we have no information that this is being carried out in our country. The author states that this is, partly, due to a confusion of certain basic notions, among them, the learning of content in a first and in a second language, and what it means to master a language for aca-demic purposes.  To  help  clarify these points, the author  studies three programs  which,  from  different  perspectives,  have  as  an  objective  the development of academic language.