Review of Related Literature

This section focuses on presenting related topics on mother tongue-based multilingual

education. It will discuss significant literature that will assist in understanding the different
variables mentioned in the study.

Challenges in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education

Over the years after its implementation, mother tongue-based multilingual education was
confronted to have many challenges in the various provinces in the Philippines. Despite being
affirmed to have a successful implementation in many countries including the Philippines,
Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education encountered some problems and issues that
challenged the implementers (Hunahunan, 2019). Some of these are the unachieved instructional
objectives (Cruz, 2015), lack of resources (Wa-Mbleka, 2014) , and teachers’ lack of ability to
teach mother tongue (Gacheche, 2010). In addition, some indigenous languages may not be
regarded as important for formal education thus it has been disregarded in the classroom.
According to Lartec et al., 2014, the recommendation of policy review and reform on MTB-
MLE to address issues regarding the implementation of it were not successful because of the
inappropriate identification of the problem that exist in the grassroots. In areas wherein English
is highly valued, parents may see MTBE as a disadvantage for the future of employability. All of
these are significant issues that any government promoting MTBE policy must consider.
Ignoring any of them will almost certainly result in failure.

English Language Performance and the Difficulties of Students in MTB-MLE

The implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in the Philippines gains
multiple criticisms from scholars, academicians, educational managers, teachers, parents and
other stakeholders of Basic Education because of its possible negative impact on the English
literacy skills of the learners. According to the study of De Guzman and De Vera (2018), many
educators doubted its effectiveness on being used as a medium of instruction considering some
regional mother tongues are hardly intellectualized languages. They believed that adding more
languages to the medium of instructions can cause confusion on the part of learners who have to
alternate their language mindsets each time and across the different courses that they take up in
the school. Aside from that, even though mother tongue regarded as an essential preparation in
acquiring second language, some educators doubted its syntactic, lexical, orthographic, and
phonemic features because they think it will aloof the linguistic system of English (Alberto,
Gabinete, & Ranola, 2010). This made them conclude that mother tongue has no way for the
learners to draw so much parallelism in language rules across their mother tongue and the
English language. The aforementioned problems above may result to the difficulties of the
learners in developing their writing skills in English language. English is the language of science,
aviation, computers, diplomacy, and tourism. Many scholars write in English and most sources
of knowledge are written in English language (Hillaman, 2015). Lack of English proficiency
may hamper individuals’ acquisition of skills such as writing. Thus, it is important provide an
empirical basis to know if mother tongue-based medium of instruction can interfere in the
English language skills of the learners.

Home Languages as an Asset

According to Thomas and Collier (1997), maintaining home languages is important for bilingual
children to help them have a positive impact on their academic achievement, ethnic identity, and
societal integration. Home languages is regard as an asset in pursuing service and educational in
the future (Kwon, 2017). However, despite the fact that everyone’s native language is crucial as
those languages are more often seen as an obstacle in acquiring English language. Thus, the task
of managing and encouraging it has fallen. Cunningham, C. (2019) wanted to address this gap
through conducting a study that provide a critical discourse analysis about teachers’ perception
towards the responsibility of maintaining and elimination students’ home languages in teaching.
The study includes 13 participants from British primary school educators. The participants
undergo to a semi-structured and open-ended interview approach to explore participants
attitudes. The first step of the interview focused on school structures in supporting children who
spoke languages beyond English and the presence of bilingual resources. While the second step
of stage of the interview focused on the impact of EAL in the school. The researchers adopt a
systematic approach in coding the participant’s discourse. The result found out different attitudes
towards maintenance and attrition of children’s LBEs. Some teachers perceived LBEs as a
resource and asset while other are not. Even though some teachers are not in favor of LBEs
maintenance, present in several teachers discourses show a rhetorical support for home language
maintenance from an orientation of language as a resource. However, the study of home
language as a language in construction such as in students writing are not seen in the data thus it
further needs a study.