[MLE] Philippines is starting MLE

Dear MLE friends,

It is always good to learn from what is going on in neighbouring countries. The Philippines government has big plans and made a start. Read more on

Intellectualizing a Language « Multilingual Education/Philippines

and

Report from the MLE training camps « Multilingual Education ...

One of the articles is copied below.

Karsten van Riezen
Education Consultant, SIL Int.

SIL, South Asia Group.

www.sil.org

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Educators trained on native tongue teaching

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 19:45:00 05/08/2009
Filed Under: Education, Language

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Education has began a summer program to train primary school educators on using their mother language as a medium of instruction.

About 50 teachers from grades 1, 2, and 3 from Luzon and Visayas schools joined the month-long training.

The training program enables teachers to prepare action plans to teach in the local dialects while enhancing their competencies in preparing curriculum, teaching materials and strategies.

Workshop outputs include lesson exemplars using Multilingual Education strategies for teaching beginning reading and for integrating content and language lessons for elementary grades, production of a multi-lingual “Big Book,” microteaching and advocacy plan.

Teachers will also be given lessons in English and Filipino.

DepEd partnered with the University of the Philippines College of Education, Reading and Teaching in the Early Grades Areas, Summer Institute of Linguistics, and Translators Association of the Philippines.

It is part of the DepEd’s Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education project, which is itself a continuation of the Lingua Franca Education Project conducted in 1999.

In a statement, DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus cited studies that pointed to better learning skills of primary students who are taught in their mother tongues.

Lapus said students are able to conceptualize and think deeper when being taught in their mother languages. Conversely, they find it difficult to learn when the medium of instruction is a language not familiar to them.