La competencia argumentativa escrita bilingüe en el contexto de la licenciatura en lenguas modernas

Abstract

The exigencies of the global society of forming not only bilingual but biliterate citizens is part of the educational current challenges (Galindo, Loaiza and Botero, 2013), especially in tertiary education. In this sense, the argumentation written in L1 and L2 is a required competence in future professionals, and especially those who are formed as foreign language teachers. This article presents the results of a rhetorical contrastive within-subject analysis of argumentative texts (petitionary letters) written in English and in Spanish by fourth-semester students in a Colombian modern languages program. From the perspective of the textual linguistics (Van Dijk, 1978), the study demonstrated a series of weaknesses in the textual structure dimensions (superstructure, macrostructure and microstructure) of the petitionary letters written in English and in Spanish, confirming with it the force of the hypothesis of linguistic interdependence of Cummins (1983)