Raphael Estenzo Orion
ENHANCE YOUR UNDERSTANDING
1. Critique the MTB-MLE curriculum framework in the Philippines.
What is your judgment about the
curriculum?
What are the strengths of this
curriculum?
What are the weaknesses of this
curriculum?
BEED 2A
The curriculum aims to help the children learn lessons
more efficiently by making use of their mother tongue. I
agree that we should really use our mother tongue
because there have been many successful researches
already that states the usage of mother tongue helps to
build a strong foundation of understanding the concept
and learn easily but there are issues and challenges that
must be addressed. The framework should give more
focus on enhancing the learning materials because I
believe it is still not enough. If the enhancement of the
numbers of the learning materials is not yet possible then
MTB-MLE should not be used as a medium of
instruction but instead it should become a subject only.
This curriculum has strong support background because
many researches (local and international) have
successfully find out that the usage of mother tongue as a
medium of instruction leads to positive outcome in the
learning of the pupils/students. Moreover, the
curriculum promotes the preservation of our dialects.
This is a good platform because it enriches the use of our
dialects. This would also trigger our writers to publish
more local literatures using the local dialects. Through
this expanding of local literatures it would influence our
young ones and also Filipino adults to love and discover
more about our local dialects.
The materials and resources are not sufficient and rich
enough to sustain the needs in facilitating the learning of
the mother tongue in different regions of the Philippines.
Also I have read that it never takes into consideration
migration-related concerns, for instance, a grade 2 pupil
from a Tausug-speaking community in Mindanao
suddenly moved to Cebu with his family, it would be
painful for a transferee to learn another language after
having accustomed to a particular MT in his/her previous
school.
 2. Discuss what needs to be improved (if any) and propose an alternative to improve the
framework.
I really want to give emphasis to the enhancement of instructional materials. The
framework should provide more accurate and variety of resources or instructional materials
that involves with MTB. And I think one way that they could enhance the number of
resources relating to the MTB is to reach out to the community and parents. The community
and the parents must also have a part in the framework. They should have a role on to help
and provide assistance in the implementation and facilitating of this curriculum. The
community should empower its citizens to give importance to their local dialects. One of the
ways that I was thinking is making policies using their local dialect, this may be simple but I
am sure this could add to make a bigger impact in learning and patronizing our own dialects.

3. Then create a "POSITION PAPER" regarding your analysis of the MTB-MLE

curriculum in the Philippines.
A position paper regarding the analysis
In the Philippines, one of the recent changes in Basic Education Curriculum brought about by
the new  K-12 program  is the  introduction of Mother Tongue- Based Multilingual Education
(MTB-MLE) through the mandate of Republic Act No. 10533, specifically in Kindergarten,
Grades 1, 2 and 3. This aims to help the children learn lessons more efficiently by making use of
their mother tongue. Mother Tongue is used as a Medium of Instruction (MOI) for Grades 1, 2
and 3 in teaching Math, Araling Panlipunan (AP), Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health
(MAPEH) and Edukasyon sa Pag-uugali (EsP). Mother tongue is taught as a separate Learning
Area in Grades 1 and 2.
Many have said that this is just a waste of time and money because it is impossible that using
our dialects could really make an impact to the pupils’ learning. The implementers were not even
fully ready from the very start of implementation of this curriculum. Moreover, the awareness of
the existence of localized version of some subjects (math and science) is close to none because
our education in the past was heavily influenced by the implementation of an English
monolingual system prohibiting the use of Philippine languages in the 1990’s during the
American occupation (Sibayan, 1985). It is very hard for the pupils to understand new terms
especially in mathematical terms translated to the local dialects and also for the teachers to teach
it.
The curriculum is indeed flawed. There are parts of it that lacks flexibility and the
applicability. However, the implementation of this curriculum must still be done for many good
reasons. It is possible for this paradigm shift to occur with proper implantation of relevant
policies and enough resources to train our implementers or educators on the use of mother
tongue so that they can effectively teach and use the MTB-MLE during their lectures. Since the
implementation of this language policy or curriculum, several researches have been made to
justify that MTB-MLE is needed in the Philippine educational system. One of these researches
on the implementation of the MTB-MLE in the Philippines is conducted by Balce, M. (2005)
recommending an adoption of the mother tongue (L1) as the language of learning and instruction
(LOLI) for Science and Health  at the elementary school level for two reasons: (1) The science
process skills (or thinking skills) are linguistic: communicating, classifying, inferring, predicting,
interpreting data, hypothesizing, defining operationally, and investigating. These skills are best
developed and sharpened using the mother tongue. (2) Elementary school children are at a stage
in which they are still mastering their mother tongue. They need time to focus and attain the full
mastery of their mother tongue to understand complex science concepts.
MLE begins by developing a strong foundation in the first language, and using the known
language to teach content and concepts. This provides continuity and creates a smooth transition
between the home and the school. The curriculum and activities relate as much as possible to the
environment and lives of the children, as a child sees the world though his or her own language
and culture and learns best from that familiar context. This puts the child at the center of learning
process and creates a child-friendly learning environment (Mackenzie, 2013:195).
With those motions I have raised above, I really am in favour that the MTB-MLE was
implemented but there are some issues that should really be addressed in order to be successful
in reaching the goal of this curriculum or language policy.