**Author details**

**4. Final observations**

70 Multilingualism and Bilingualism

the goal was met in only 55.5%.

The Colombian journey to become a country with an educational system that "develops communication skills in order for students to be able to read, understand, write, listen, speak, and express themselves correctly in a foreign language" [22] began in 1979. Thirty-five years later, in 2004, the MEN set long-term quantitative goals to be achieved in 2019. In 2010, the MEN established intermediate goals for 2014 that could serve as a sign of how close the country was (of) to having all high school graduates at B1 Threshold (pre-intermediate) level, while all

The results presented here show that the intermediate goals were not met. By 2014, only 6.7% of the high school graduates had achieved a B1 Threshold (pre-intermediate). The goal was 40%. In other words, only 16.8% of the target was reached. On the other hand, 11.1% of university graduates were at a B2 Vantage (intermediate) level. The goal was 20%. In this case,

What about the English Level in neighboring countries? No assessments have been made in Latin American countries that are comparable to the Colombian context; besides most

university graduates were supposed to be at a B2 Vantage (high intermediate) level.

**Figure 6.** English levels in higher education by main cities and others cities and type of school.

Julio C. Alonso Cifuentes\*, Diana M. Díaz Mejía and Daniela Estrada Nates

\*Address all correspondence to: jcalonso@icesi.edu.co

Cienfi and Universidad Icesi, Cali, Colombia
