Multilingual approach to teaching is pushed

The Department of Education will be integrating the multilingual way of teaching in public elementary schools nationwide.

DepEd regional director Carolino Mordeno said that DepEd will be using English, Filipino and the mother tongue to teach students for them to be able to comprehend more of the topic.

“We will be adding up Lingua Franca or the local dialect to Grades 1 and 2 including English and Filipino,” he said.

Mordeno said that DepEd is already making the guidelines on how the said system will be implemented in schools.

Mordeno said that using the language the child understands not only affirms the value of the child and his cultural and language heritage, but also enables the child to immediately master the curriculum content while facilitating the acquisition of Filipino and English.

Additionally, when the mother tongue is used in the classroom, the critical thinking skills that develop then transfer to other languages when those languages become functional.

DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus said that they will be using the toolkit introduced to them by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The UNESCO Advocacy Kit for Promoting Multilingual Education is a collection of five booklets that provides information and ideas for making education systems more responsive to communities that are not fluent in the language of schooling. 

Numerous education specialists and experts from inside and outside the Asia-Pacific region contributed their research findings and experiences in MLE, including contributions from literacy specialists.   — Jasmin R. Uy/BRP