Language is a medium of communication that reflects the spirit, attitudes and values of people who use it. It is a means by which culture is preserved and transmitted from one generation to another. It can also have great access to information that deals with the power to educate people. For this reason, Language being the medium of instruction and learning is dealt in our educational system and could be an urgent issue that needs to be addressed.
Language education however, can refer to three very different type of learning experiences. In one type of language the medium of instruction throughout the entire school experience is the learner’s mother tongue e.g. the language spoken at home, in this type of language education, it is assumed that the learner has age appropriate oral language fluency in his/her mother tongue. One of the primary objectives of this type of language education is to improve language proficiency of the learners, thereby increasing this ability to use and understand that language when it is used as a medium of instruction in content areas, such as Mathematics, Science and History.
Our Philippine educational system has evolved with several curriculums in continuing pursuit of a quality, lifelong and meaningful learning experience. The advent of K-12 curriculum brought revisions of subject matters to be thought in the medium of Mother Tongue Based-Multi Lingual Education. As a heart of K-12 curriculum, it focused on the whole stretch of formal education and alternative learning system.
Mother Tongue Based- Multi Lingual Education is the effective use of more than two languages for literary instruction. It does put an end to Bilingual Education Policy (BEP) which has been in operation for the 35 years. The goal of MTB-MLE is to make children literate in their first language, as well as to help children fluency in the second language. Children who learn to read their first language first are more likely to acquire a second language.
The MTB-MLE path to school success is based on providing children with equitable opportunity to learn, the use of mother tongue or home language is the key to increasing access to school and facilitating learning including learning of the second language. This is because the use of a child’s language is one of the most important factors in helping the children to read and write, learning academic content such as Math and History and also learning other languages.
Developing the mother tongue helps students gain early reading skills more quickly as well as transfer key skills to a second language. Without solid foundation of literacy, Math and other subjects students will not succeed in school. They have difficulty in passing the exams, they will also be discouraged and alienated from the culture of school, frequent drop-out.
The implementation emphasizes the mother tongue as the learning subject area and as a medium of instruction for the development of beginning reading fluency.
The MTB-MLE provides better performance among learners to be critically thinkers engaging in independent and reflective thinking with the list of core critical thinking skills that includes observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and metacognition. Furthermore, MT Based- MLE programs enables students from non-dominant language communities to build strong education foundation of language they know best.
By: Mrs. Maria Criselda S. Gestiada | School Principal-II | Sta. Rita High School, Olongapo City
