React On The Use Of Mother Tongue In Teaching Lessons For Grades 1 And 2 4a1857

React on the use of Mother Tongue in teaching lessons for Grades 1 and 2 The mother tongue plays a very important part in a child's identity and self-esteem. The mother tongue provides the basis for the child's ability to learn. The child finds it easier to learn their second language and other school subjects. It is of considerable advantage to society if many people are multilingual. Many Filipino learners face barriers in education. One of these barriers is that our learners often begin their education in a language they do not understand. Because they do not understand the language of education, many learners become discouraged and tend to drop-out from school. Content of material is often culturally distant or unfamiliar to the learners. The limited education that learners receive does not prepare them for lifelong learning. Mother tongue-based multilingual education (MLE) is a formal or non-formal education, in which the children’s mother tongue is used in the classroom as a bridge in learning Filipino and English. Children begin their education in a language they understand, their mother tongue, and develop a strong foundation in their mother language. The purpose of a multilingual education program is to develop appropriate cognitive and reasoning skills enabling children to operate equally in different languages – starting in the mother tongue with transition to Filipino and then English. It is a structured program of language learning and cognitive development which provides learners with a strong educational foundation in the first language. If the mother tongue is not used, we create people who are illiterate in two languages. Children do not become sufficiently fluent in their mother tongue (L1) in both oral and literacy if their vocabulary in L1 is limited, thus restricting their ability to learn a second language (L2). A strong foundation in L1 is required for learning L2. Children’s understanding of concepts is limited or confused if learning is only L2. In the Philippines, a longitudinal study was conducted with grade one through three students in Lubuagan. The mother tongue pilot project began in one school in 1999, and the study was formally launched in 2005 with three schools in the experimental group and three in the control group. The Lubuagan First Language Component (FLC) multilingual education (MLE) pilot project was initiated through a partnership of educators from the Lubuagan community, the local government, the Department of Education (DepEd), and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc. (SIL) International Philippines. The FLC program promoted the use of the children’s first language in their basic education experience, complementing the ongoing education in Filipino and English, the two major languages of education as mandated by the country’s Bilingual Education Policy (BEP). Children in the first to third grades of Lubuagan public schools were taught the subject matter in their first language, Lilubuagan, and were then taught to handle the same subject matter using the two major languages. After three years of the study, consistent advantages were noted for the children in the mother tongue schools. They scored significantly higher than students in the schools in math, reading, Filipino, and English.

The results were striking. Teachers observed high levels of participation among the students, and the teachers themselves began to use the first language orally to foster a more dynamic learning environment. In the 2006 National Achievement Tests for Third Grade Reading, Lubuagan students outperformed all other schools in the province by up to 30 percent for both Filipino and English. In 2007, first to third grade students from Lubuagan consistently outperformed the other schools in all subjects, including Math, Filipino, and English, by over 20 percent. gathered from the pilot implementers revealed that teachers find the use of the MTB-MLE very useful. Pupils are very participative and most of them have learned to read by this time. Although some teachers find it tiresome, especially in the preparation of materials, but they feel rewarded by seeing the enjoyment among the pupils in their learning experiences. Pupils‘ increased understanding of classroom content is the biggest benefit of MTBMLE. In mother tongue the children can learn all the words and they can understand. Whereas in English they can read, but sometimes they cannot understand. That is the benefit of mother tongue—that they can understand because the Mother Tongue is the language that kids use at home, they can easily understand what the teacher says. As mandated by DepED, the Mother Tongue shall be used as a medium of instruction and as a subject from Grades 1 to 3. The early graders should be taught in all subjects in their Mother Tongue first because one does not learn in a language that he does not understand. When a beginning learner thinks, he uses the language that he grew up with. All the Grade 1 and 2 subjects are taught in the Mother Tongue, except Filipino and English, for better understanding of the pupils. My Belief is that all children can learn to read with understanding within the first few years of schooling in a language that they use and in a language that they understand. And this is one reason why children should listen, speak, read and write first in a language that they use and they understand. . . their Mother Tongue. The use of one’s Mother Tongue is an expression of one’s culture. It aims to develop among the young learners an awareness and appreciation of their own culture. In school, there should be a smooth transition from a child’s home language to learning a second language and learning using the second language as a medium. On developing the attitude towards literacy, children who have positive attitudes and experiences about reading are more likely to be motivated to learn to read. Brain development research shows that reading aloud to children every day increases their brain's capacity for language and literacy skills and is the most important thing that one can do to prepare them for learning to read. Literacy development depends on the development of oral language which refers to one’s knowledge and use of the structure, meanings and uses of the language. One cannot be successful in learning to read (and write) in a language he does not know.

Once students have established a literate base in one language, they should be able to transfer knowledge and skills gained in that language to reading in a second language as long as they are adequately exposed to the second language and motivated to acquire it. By the time children begin school, they have begun gaining confidence in their ability to communicate meaningfully in their mother tongue. They have built a foundation of knowledge and experience through observing and interacting with peers and adults in their community. The language, knowledge and experience that children bring to school form an important foundation for their learning in the classroom. The educational problem faced by many children from ethno linguistic communities is twofold. In the first place, some have no access to education at all. Those who do have access to school but do not speak the official language when they enter the education system find that their knowledge, experience and language—rather than serving as a foundation for learning—are treated as a disadvantage. Their language skills do not serve them because their language has no place in the classroom. Instead, textbooks and teaching are in a language they neither speak nor understand. Their learning and problem-solving experiences and their knowledge of “how things work” in their own culture and social setting do not serve them because the culture of the classroom, the teachers, and the textbooks is that of the dominant society. The most powerful factor in predicting educational success for minority learners is the amount of formal schooling their received in their L1. Only those language minority students who had 5-6 years of strong cognitive and academic development in their L1—as well as through [L2]—did well in Grade 11 assessments. Children should be helped to build up oral skills in the second language before reading instruction in that language is started. Minority children’s knowledge of L2 vocabulary determines their comprehension of oral text much more than mother tongue L2 speakers. When children continue to develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout their primary school years, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in both, and they are able to compare and contrast the ways in which their two languages organize reality The children who go to the primary schools are often teased by other students for using their MT in the classroom when they talk to their counterparts. Teachers advise them to use L2 instead of their MT. Parents are asked not to use MT at home in order to make the children fluent in the L2. All these things have led to a negative attitude towards their language in the minds of the parents and children. Children whose first language is not used at school … experience lower levels of learning and are much less likely to be able to contribute to a country’s economic and intellectual development. Despite the wide beliefs that MTB-MLE leads to increased understanding among students, there are some similar concern about the disadvantages of the policy. Teachers described the large number of languages in the Philippines as a challenge to implementing a mother tongue reform. Our society is multilingual, and we feel it is impossible, even in grade

one, to avoid the integration of several languages in a single lesson. Some teachers further problematized the notion of mother tongue. The problem is that we have so many dialects thus teaching in the mother tongue is a challenge when there was no true mother tongue in the classroom. To address the multitude of dialects in one community, why can't we use the national language as the common medium of instruction in a community. Similarly, teachers appeared to struggle with the practical application of the mother tongue as the language of instruction. According to DepEd policy, teachers must incorporate each student‘s mother tongue into the curriculum. They explained that if a child‘s L1 differs from the mother tongue used in the classroom that the teacher must adapt the lessons to include that dialect or language. Teachers expressed this as a challenge for three reasons. First, they would need to invest additional time in learning the nuances of a new language variety. Second, it would create a disted lesson. Third, they questioned the parameters around different languages because the varieties spoken between municipalities are so fluid. The most commonly encountered challenge for implementing MTB-MLE was the lack of materials available to teachers in the classroom. Teachers learned that they would be implementing MTB-MLE only one week prior to the start of the school year. They did not receive government materials right away; rather during the second week of school they were provided with curriculum guides that listed core competencies. Later, school heads were provided with learning packages that included some lessons and student worksheets, but these materials had to be reproduced at the cost of the teachers. Teachers claimed that their teaching had suffered from these limited materials. The multilingual environment presented a challenge because it added complexity to the teaching context. Teachers were unsure how to teach something in only Kalinga or Ilokano when their everyday life was a blend of multiple languages. In addition, it seemed difficult to define one true mother tongue for a single classroom given the differences between families‘ home languages. Second, academic language was presented as a challenge due to the large number of technical terminology that could not be easily translated into the dialect. This primarily included math and science . Teachers did not know which terminology to use in class because they have traditionally borrowed words from English to name concepts. Parents also struggled to keep up with the higher-level dialect and could not always help their children with homework as a result. Third, a lack of materials presented a challenge to implementation. Teachers were expected to pay for photocopying of the few materials provided, and they also spent many extra hours a week creating their own lesson aids. Parents described this challenge in relation to a lack of materials available for their home use. Since most materials are published in Filipino or English, it is nearly impossible to find materials in the local language.

A Completion Paper in Master of Education Kalinga Apayao State College

Submitted to: Paulino P. Reyes II, Ph. D. Instructor

Submitted by: James Rhyan G. Balawan