Katha 2014: What MTB-MLE is and What it is Not

Minutes of the Workshop Transcribed. Speaker Dr. Ricardo Ma. Nolasco

KATHA 2014 Part 2: Day 6

What MTB-MLE and What it is Not

Dr. Ricardo Ma. Nolasco

Associate Professor

University of the Philippines Diliman

August 30, 2014

Minutes of the Workshop

1. Introduction. The speaker emphasized the help and continuous assistance of the Congressman for him to push through the MTB MLE program. He started with the short stories in big books translated in the mother tongues of the people there. He turned to some of the pages where the native language Miraya was written and asked some of the participants to interpret the story. He emphasized the importance of learning reading through short stories with the use of pictures in the books. He surfaced the problem of not using these native languages in school, instead stories are translated in English.

2. The Philippine Experience. He focused on the teaching of English which is a failure in the Philippine context of curriculum. The author said that the Filipinos must first be intellectualized before learning English.

3. 1987 Philippine Constitution. He discussed the Philippine constitution where the Filipino and English must be used as medium of instruction in school. But then it should be emphasized that it should be based on the constitutional law. However the constitution states English must be used as the MOI in Philippine schools.

3.1. ECCD Curriculum. Early Years Act 2013 states the use of the native language from 0 to 4 years old. It shall use the child’s mother tongue as the medium of instruction, however this is not followed in most daycare centers.

3.2. Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013. This law states that the students should be taught in the native language not in the first three years of education but six years of education. Provisions were provided regarding the use of native language as MOI. These provisions involve that the language used should be the one understood by the students. It also includes assessment of the learners in the first three years of schooling of the students using the materials, exams and other means of evaluation which should be done in the mother tongue.

3.3. Transition Program. DepEd shall have a formulated and gradual transition program from Grade 4 to Grade 6 so that Filipino and English will be introduced as the medium of instruction for the students to realize that this should be the MOI in the higher years of education. Transition period starts when the student and his competence are ready to use English and Filipino as MOI. This is yet to be determined because our implementation is still until grade 3 only. Questions were raised on the students with different mother tongues which are blended in a linguistically heterogeneous classroom. The answer is that the teacher should know the native languages of the students and should practice the most appropriate language to be used in the classroom. Another question was raised on the global competitiveness of the student in English if the students should be first taught in the native language. The answer is the language of English is also improved when the students are already honed to their mother tongue. This is an immersion strategy for the students to learn their mother tongue before they are immersed in the English language.

4. Implementing the Rules and Regulations. The speaker clarified the transition of L1 to L2. This is to mean that the student should be honed both to L1 and L2 and not forget the L1 already. L1 should be used for life. MTB MLE is an additive education where L1 adds to the L2 of the students. There has been a study where students who learned in L1 and L2 have higher scores than those who only learned L2. This is due to the high drop out rates of the students because of socio-economic and linguistic factors.

5. Reading without Understanding. The issue of non-readers and students who cannot comprehend is a big problem in today’s Philippine education. FLEMMS (a type of international survey) concluded that literacy in the Philippines is only read, write and compute, but no comprehend. Level 3 includes understanding of the reading, however in the Philippines the students only reached a large percentage on level 2 only. Survey questions were raised by the speaker to test the participants their literacy. The survey concludes that 1 out of 5 are illiterate, which may be bad news but can be solved. Other international tests which includes TIMMS in 2003 states that the Philippines is in the bottom 3 of the most literate students in the world. The reason behind is the use of language for the students. Philippines is one of the countries who use a language which is not the mother tongue of the students, because there is the misconception that English learners are good students in the subjects.

6. Conditions under Aquino Administration. There are slight changes in the improvement of the literacy of the students, which ranges to 68%. Comprehension is 67%. How about in English? Their fluency is the same in the Filipino; that is, only 18% in reading comprehension. This is a question of how come the students who are taught in English first have low scores in English. NAT results show that achievement scores in grade 6 and high school is below 80%, while NCAE results compared to 2012 and 2013 show that the students’ GSA are only 37% from 45%, science and math the worst. These figures came from DepEd. There may indeed be a problem in the teaching of the subjects taught to the students, a problem that can definitely be solved. TEPT in 2012 results in grade 2 in the Philippines results show that structure and written expression are the lowest in scores in both the students and the teachers. Teachers’ Mean Performance shows that they also have low scores below 50% in English, Science and Math. Valenzuela Experiment 2010 shows that Tagalog questions are longer than in the English questions. The experiment, which was tested in English shows that high achievers got 1 out of 10 questions only, while those tested in Filipino got 4 out 10, which may be something related to language, especially in the comparison between high achievers and average students who answered the same questions. Other tests include the survey of what Filipinos read which are not textbooks—these include newspapers and comics, bibles cookbooks and history.

7. Conclusion. There is a need of change in the law—that is MTBMLE by letting the teachers finish the 5-day workshop in Valenzuela.