Name: Laguindab, Norhanie L.

Subject & Section: ELE 125-Ff

Philippine’s Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education and Language Attitude:

Criticizing Mahboob and Cruz’s Attitudinal Survey

Ahmar Mahboob and Priscilla Cruz discussed the discovered problems concerning the
proposed utilization of mother-tongue based instruction in the Philippines in their research article
entitled, “English and mother-tongue-based multilingual education: Language attitudes in the
Philippines” in 2013.

The Philippine was colonized before by several countries such as Spain, America and
Japan. In order for the colonizers to attain their goals, they used education as a tool along with
that; they also issued several language policies that have greatly influenced the Philippine’s
current educational system and language attitude. Due to nationalist movements in 1960s-1970s,
the Philippine government decided to make language policies for the country. The proposed
language policies resulted to Bilingual language policy, the usage of two languages in education
in line with the specific subjects assigned to each language. The purpose of Bilingual Education
policy is for the awareness for the country’s national language and vernaculars.

The researchers argue that even though the mother-tongue-based education policy is for
strengthening national and local languages for standardization of the education, there is still a
problem that will rise and may affect the positive result of mother-tongue-based education. The
researchers also argue that Philippines should address the attitudes toward language before the
mother-tongue-based policy strengthens the English’s linguistic imperialist position. They argue
that to make the mother-tongue based education successful it should be controlled by a
specialized organization that formulates strategies to strengthen the local languages position in
several domains such as in society, economy, education, and politics.

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 The researchers used attitudinal survey as early in 2011 in order to collect data, Survey
Monkey was used to create the said survey. The survey has been made accessible to social
websites and Universities. The survey contains four (4) questions such as, (1) the participants
were asked to rate their level of proficiency in English, Tagalog, and their native language. (2)
The participants were asked to rate their proficiency for their skills in listening, speaking, writing
and reading with the English, Filipino, and non-Filipino mother-tongue. (3) The respondents
were asked for their language preferences that will be taught as a subject for schools. (4) The
respondents were asked for their language preference that should be used as medium of
instruction. The responds of the participants were summarized to graphs for clearer and
understandable presentation.

The findings of the researchers’ attitudinal survey revealed that most of their respondents
showed that they were more proficient in English than in Tagalog and their mother-tongue, their
proficiency with the four skills showed in the result of the data collected that in terms of
speaking and listening, their skills are almost the same in the three languages but slightly better
with their mother-tongue because they utilizes it in their everyday life and their skills in terms of
reading and writing, they were better in English language than the two languages. The findings
also showed that majority of the respondents chosen English language as a subject and lastly
they also chosen English as medium of instruction.

The results of the researches points to the conclusion that English is still dominant and
most preferred language in education, social, political, economic domain. However, the
researches still argues that we should engage with the recent language policies for it is design for
the development and raising status of our local languages that have been deprived in the past
centuries. The researches strongly argues that for the language policies to take effect the
community, economic factor and other stakeholder must collaborate with the language policy
and that they should understand, accept and practice it.

The main studies of the authors are the language attitudes of the Filipinos to English,
Filipino, and their mother-tongue in social, economic, political and educational domain. The
researchers also highlighted the status between the dominant language and the local languages,
and also the issues regarding to the bilingual education policy and mother-tongue-based
education.

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 The researchers claim that the mother-tongue-based education attempts to change the gap
between the rich and the poor, that regardless of what they speak they shall all attain high level
of literacy however, in reality, English language is still the most need skill in a lot of opportunity,
so the rich will surely enter in the private school and the poor will continue in the public school
that uses vernacular due to financial difference and so the gap will surely widen. Thus, “due to
language allocation inequality to the school system is maintained” (Mahboob, 2011).

The method used by the researchers is appropriate with the study however, I have been
dissatisfied with, (1) the distribution of the survey is not equal, the respondents should have
been equalize to higher class, middle class and lower class so that the results have become
justifiable. The respondents were mostly professional so they mostly chosen the English as high
proficiency, the study should also have gotten a response to the lower class for they are mostly
the one who goes to public school that uses vernacular. (2) The number of respondents. The
number of the participants should have been increased, because the scope of the study was the
Philippines so, there should be a lot of number of Filipinos should have been the respondents.

This study is an important source for the current arguments concerning to the Philippine’s
mother-tongue-based education with regards to the attitudinal survey of this study which reflect
the role of the English, Filipino and local language to educational domain. This study will also
help the future researchers with a subject for Philippine language policy and planning and those
with the same topic with the researches. It will also help the language policy makers to reshape
the mother-tongue-based education and to strengthen the positive objectives and recognize the
inadequacy of the said policy.

In conclusion, this research is essential for language planning and policy researches. This
study is best to be conducted in every provinces and region of the Philippines to study the
effectiveness of the bilingual education policy and the mother-tongue-based education. The
mother-tongue-based education can only result positively if the community will collaborate to
the policy and implement it accordingly such creating an opportunity for the usage of local
languages to some jobs.

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References:

Gonzalez, A. (1998). The language planning situation in the Philippines. Journal of Multilingual
and Multicultural Development, 19(5), 487-525.

Mahboob, A. (2011, June 17). On the politics of language. Weekly L’express, p.3.

Mahboob, A. & Cruz, P. (2013). English and mother-tongue-based multilingual education:

Language attitudes in the Philippines. Asian Journal of English Language Studies. 1. 1-19.

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