Dominican Republic seeks to make its high school graduates fluent in English

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Dominican Republic launched on Wednesday a program aimed at learning English as a second language for students in the public sector in the last two years of high school, which will take as a parameter the scale of levels of that language used by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

In the first stage, the program will reach some 74,000 students in 5th and 6th grade of high school in public schools where the extended school day is applied and will be taught for eight hours a week in the afternoon.

This stage will cover 646 schools in the 122 Educational Districts into which the country is divided, said Dominican President Luis Abinader, who presented the initiative at the National Palace.

“English for a better life” aims to enable students graduating from public schools to have a B-1 level of English, equivalent to mastering the fundamental aspects of the language and possessing the necessary linguistic skills for its daily use.

The government began training English teachers and evaluating, training, and accompanying them to implement the program.

“This program for teaching English as a second language will generate the human capital that the country requires in different sectors of national production for greater growth and sustainable development,” said the president.

The program seeks to improve job opportunities and professional growth of young people who may be eligible in services, tourism, and free zones, among others.

Tourism and free trade zones are, together with remittances, the country’s primary sources of foreign exchange.

In recent decades, the number of Dominican students fluent in English has increased considerably, although most of them are educated in private schools and specialized English language centers.

With information from EFE