Mother tongue-based multilingual education

EDUCATION UPDATE
Amante B. Ulep

BALBALAN, Kalinga – The Institutionalization of mother tongue-based multilingual education in formal education is now posing as a big and interesting challenge for educators.

The Department of Education issued Order No.74 on July 14, 2009 and according to the order, integration of multilingual education (MLE) will extend to pre-school and to the Alternative Learning System.

Education that begins in the language of the learners has far more positive effects in school children was the rationale of the order.

According to information issued by the DepEd, studies show that children learn best when instruction at the primary level is in their first language, or mother tongue. Research also reveals that a child is more comfortable learning in the primary language. This allows for better conceptualization and deeper thinking.

The DepEd, in a recent press statement, said it will continue teacher training in mother tongue-based multilingual education, so teachers will acquire a clearer understanding of the principles, practices, roles and responsibilities needed for the successful implementation of mother tongue-based multilingual education.

An MLE Framework has reportedly been prepared for teachers, school managers, instructional quality assurance staff and education officials.

Among ten fundamental requirements, the MLE framework requires a working orthography or spelling for the chosen local language that is acceptable to stakeholders; promotes intellectualization of that language.

It also requires development, production and distribution of inexpensive instructional materials in the language at the school, division, and regional levels, and; gives priority on early reading and children’s literature.

MLE, is the effective use of more than two languages for literacy and instruction. The Philippines’ DepEd introduced a MLE Bridging Plan to be used for reference during the first three years of MLE implementation.

The department will also collaborate with MLE specialists to incorporate an MLE certification process. Their aim is to retain the privilege of establishing MLE certification procedures to maintain quality MLE programmes.

According to UNESCO, ethnic and linguistic minority people face obstacles to access quality basic education. This leads to high illiteracy rates and a poor quality of life. It is also a threat to the survival of their language and culture.

UNESCO has a strong commitment to support mother tongue instruction and bilingual/multilingual education to improve educational quality, especially for disadvantaged groups, and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity in all societies.

A “reflection paper” by Paulo C. Dorongon says “bilingual or multilingual education is a common practice adopted by many countries. As such learners are expected to learn one or more languages aside from his or her mother tongue. As in the case of most Filipinos, learning a second or a foreign language means learning new culture, new grammar, new words, etc. Questions arise as to whether learners have the real capacity of learning two or more languages all at the same time. But how do learners really learn a language?”

More in his own words: According Chomsky (1959), language is not learned solely through a process of memorizing and repeating, but that the mind contains an active language processor, the language acquisition device (LAD) that generates rules through the unconscious acquisition of grammar.

“Learning two or more languages is quite interesting. Learners are exposed to different cultures, different grammatical structures, different words and sentence patterns which will later create a big problem in their language acquisition. Lado (1957) stated that when studying English as a second or foreign language, learners found it troublesome to master the language because of many grammatical devices that need to be considered. He added that it is important to keep in mind that a variety of formal devices may signal grammatical meanings. And it is this variety that causes many of the learning problems in mastering a foreign language, since the use of different devices by two languages will constitute a problem.

Among the most frequent elements used in various languages to signal grammatical structure are word order, inflection (bound morphemes) correlation of forms, function words, intonation, stress, and pauses. Given this scenario, learning another language would not be an easy task to students; they need to master several grammatical elements and words which are entirely different from their native language.

On the other hand, teachers are faced with different challenges and problems when teaching bilingual learners. Sosa (1992) as stated by Diaz-Rico and Weed (1995) said that bilingual educators continue to face numerous challenges.

Some of these are as follows: need to integrate innovations (cooperative learning, etc) into bilingual education, need to explore ways to avoid placing language minority students in programs that contribute to dropping out and need to examine state policies that adversely affect LEP students (e.g., exit exams for graduation, remedial ESL classes).

With these, it is a challenge among educators to devise learning materials, and to create a teaching strategy that would meet the needs of L2 learners.

References:
Diaz-Rico, L. and Weed, K. (1995). The Crooscultural Language and Academic Development Handbook. Massachusetts: Allyn& Bacon Company