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Synthesis On Multiligualism

The document discusses the significance of using a student's mother tongue in education, highlighting its effectiveness in enhancing communication and learning for young learners. It notes global efforts, particularly by UNESCO, to promote mother tongue instruction, while acknowledging the challenges faced in multilingual countries like India and the Philippines. Issues such as teacher dissatisfaction, lack of resources, and the need for community language proficiency are identified as barriers to successful implementation of mother tongue-based multilingual education programs.

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kerrin galvez
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52 views2 pages

Synthesis On Multiligualism

The document discusses the significance of using a student's mother tongue in education, highlighting its effectiveness in enhancing communication and learning for young learners. It notes global efforts, particularly by UNESCO, to promote mother tongue instruction, while acknowledging the challenges faced in multilingual countries like India and the Philippines. Issues such as teacher dissatisfaction, lack of resources, and the need for community language proficiency are identified as barriers to successful implementation of mother tongue-based multilingual education programs.

Uploaded by

kerrin galvez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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DEO J.

GALVEZ
MA. Ed English Student

A Synthesis on Mother Tongue in Multilingual Contexts

The importance and benefit of using the student's mother tongue in the classroom has
been already discussed to some extent in the previous studies. Research findings from all over
the world have confirmed the view that the learner's mother tongue is the best medium of
instruction for young learners. The mother tongue of a student can be an important means for
establishing an effective communication between the student and the teacher. This, in turn, can
considerably help such learners to acquire both basic literacy skills and also complex
educational concepts with a comparative ease than the ones who are taught through a second
or the dominant language. Such deliberations and findings all over the world have resulted in a
concerted effort at the international level to make arrangement for providing at least the primary
education through the mother tongue of the young learners. Towards this end, a number of
agreements have been signed and working framework has been formulated at the global level.
Such initiatives have been led especially by the UNESCO. In this regard, different nations have
taken up this task of providing education through the mother tongue of the young learners in
their respective countries. But implementing this kind of education is not an easy task for
multilingual countries like India. India is characterized by an abundance of different languages
and cultures used by its citizens who belong to a wide variety of social and ethnic classes.
Almost all the classrooms in schools in India reflect this linguistic and cultural diversity.

In the Philippine setting the design of the MTB-MLE is that there is only one mother
tongue to which the Filipino and English are added; Even when regions are deemed
monolingual, like for example in the NCR, there were several schools with many languages
because students come from all over the Philippines and they bring with them their languages.

Thus, several researches conclude about the lack of common understanding and wrong
appreciation of the program among teachers, resulting in their dissatisfaction and unhappiness
because of “additional workload”. However, the language policy is part of a rising trend around
the world to support mother tongue instruction in the early years of a child’s education. In
Southeast Asia, this is apparent in a growing number of educational programs that use the
mother tongue approach. The shift towards mother tongue based multilingual education is not a
walk in a highway. Numerous challenges need to be addressed like the production of materials,
training of teachers, management of resources, and perhaps, the socio-cultural support to
enhance this program. Hence, all elements of the program had not been in place,” with
problems such as lack of learning materials and competent teachers. There is also the issue of
teachers not speaking the language of the community. 

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