Is my bilingual self really limiting my knowledge of the world? If so, may "Dios" forgive me...

I AM a bilingual speaker. Yes, I AM. I must confess that I have been bearing that cross ever since I was born. The driver of my confession is that, earlier this week, some policy-makers came out in support of the atonement of my original sin . Yet, I am not willing to take all the blame for expressing my own opinions, feelings or thoughts - and for that matter, those of my students, too - in more than one language.

If anything, my bilingualism should be blamed on the fact that I am Galician. Just like in any other Comunidad Autónoma that boasts a co-official language other than Spanish, being raised there entails a great likelihood of speaking and/or being schooled in, at least, two languages of instruction. And such was the case from my early childhood to the last school year of compulsory secondary education, formerly known as EGB (yes, "Yo también fui a EGB ").

Then, I wanted to pursue my first university degree overseas . For me, at that time a novice English student, that word literally meant going beyond the Galician coastline, which is arguably the westernmost point on European soil. Finis terrae, as the Romans named it, was the cape village that would later on be referred to as Fisterra in Galician. Nowadays, St. James' pilgrims who walk the so-called Camino Inglés , whether native or overseas ones, will still call the edge of the world by its Galician place name. And I daresay they all know what Fisterra means, regardless of the language(s) they can speak or may have learnt at school.

You may agree with me that, although Latin is a dead language - not quite yet Galician, which is spoken by 2.2 million people , both place names are very similar in form. Not only does one derive from the other, but they are both quite self-explanatory, too: Finis terrae (Lat.) > Fisterra (Gal.) = "End of the world" in English.

So, here goes my first set of "expiatory" questions to you based on the previous example:

Why wouldn't students like to learn more about the etymological links across Romance and Germanic languages? What is more, wouldn't it be more meaningful for them to trace the history of the Camino inglés back to the times when the Brits harboured in Fisterra to hit the road to Santiago de Compostela? And if so, why not teach that lesson in English, Spanish and Galician?

My second deadly sin might have been not having enrolled in Santiago de Compostela University . A one-hour drive from my hometown would have been so convenient for me to go back to my Mum's at weekends to stock up on food supplies and have my clothes washed. Though tempting as it was, that idea didn't quite fit in the kind of self-sufficient experience I was envisioning. Salamanca University was awaiting me, instead.

The city of Salamanca, as you might know, is located in Castilla y León, a monolingual Comunidad Autónoma. However, during my college years there was not a single day that I wouldn't practise my English with international students. At that time, my ever-growing morri?a (a much deeper sentiment of saudade or nostalgia) compelled me to take "Galician Literature and History" as part of my English Language and Literature degree. I remember it well when, at office hours, a German student in the class brought to the professor's attention that he wasn't able to follow the lecture in Galician and suggested that he taught it in Spanish. Back then, I was also taking German lessons for credit. For the whole fired-up tutoría, they dueled by each taking turns in German and Galician, respectively. The funny thing, though, was that I didn't need to mediate between them, as they understood each other perfectly well.

I must also admit that my third deadly sin was skipping classes on a daily basis. Yes, mum, I should have stuck to A-plan and have gone to college in Santiago de Compostela. Far from regretting that, I am grateful to Caballerizas (an Iberian "Cheers "), for giving me the opportunity to try the best pincho de tortilla ever while practising my English. Many a tandem I had there (that is another beautiful Latin word still being used across languages), and with time my English started to blossom. The more pinchos I had, the more fluent I became... and, to be honest, the less time I spent at formal instruction. In my own defence, and to make up for those missing classes, I did learn a lot about the origin of that rustic canteen, formerly used as the stables of the Palacio de Anaya .

Some years later, I graduated from college gaining vast knowledge not only about the origin of the word "overseas", but also from people who came to Salamanca from overseas to learn/teach Spanish, English, Galician, German, Portuguese and many other languages and cultures.

Monolingualism will definitely not guarantee a more efficient acquisition of curricular content in bilingual school programmes following a CLIL approach . Going back to a monolingual model - and doing so with no supporting evidence - is just like confessing to God that what has been working well for many students and teachers alike for 20 years is an original sin that needs to be atoned. Students, just like any of us these days, engage in transcultural social practices where more than one language is present and whereupon translanguaging helps to build bridges across cultures, languages and any other curricular content.