I.

INTRODUCTION

There are 171 distinct languages officially recognized in the Philippines, a nation with a
diverse ethnic population. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the Philippines,
four of which are now extinct (no known speakers) and 24 of which are dying or going
extinct. National languages serve as a unifying force, a catalyst for nationalism, and a visual
depiction of a country. Support for mother tongue instruction in the early years of a child's
education is a trend that is spreading across the globe. This is seen from the growing
number of educational initiatives employing this strategy in Southeast Asia. But only the
Philippines has a national policy mandating mother tongue-based multilingual education
(MTB-MLE) during the primary school years, making it unique in Southeast Asia.

Start teaching in the learner's mother tongue and encourage complete, ongoing literacy in
that language as well as oral and written skills in any additional educational languages. It
has been discovered that the most successful programs keep up the usage of the mother
tongue for up to six years or longer. The learner's first language should be utilized
throughout school not just for fundamental literacy but also to promote the transfer of
learning to other languages.

We should concentrate on the usage of multilingualism in society and tackle theoretical

problems like how different languages and linguistic variations are used to index social
identity because individuals differ greatly in the ways they learn and use different languages.
The practice of utilizing or encouraging the use of numerous languages by an individual
speaker or a group of speakers is known as multilingualism. People who desire to take part
in globalization and cultural openness can benefit from it. Multilingualism is the usage of
numerous languages or the capacity to speak more than one language. Polyglots are people
who can speak many languages. The linguistic theory and affordance theory are the two
main theories surrounding multilingualism.

II. OBJECTIVES

At the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

a. Identify the local languages used in Mother Tongue-Based Education;

b. Recite the different good practices Mother Tongue-First Multilingual Education; and
c. Critique theories of multilingualism.

III. CONTENT

What is MOTHER TONGUE?

 A first language, native tongue, native language, or mother/father/parent tongue, is a
language that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some
countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language of one's ethnic
group rather than one's first language.

Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB –MLE)

Many multilingual countries are now attempting to address these issues through
mother tongue- based multilingual education (MTB MLE) programs. MTB MLE uses the
learner’s first language (termed the L1) to teach basic literacy (reading and writing) and
beginning academic content. The second language (L2) is taught systematically and
gradually, so that students are able to transfer their knowledge from L1 to L2 (Benson, 2006;
Heugh, 2006). MTB MLE programs generally follow one of two models.

Sec. 4 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of R.A. 10533(Enhance Basic

Education Act of 2013) – “the language/ languages first learned by a child, w/c he/she
identifies with, identified as a native language user by others, w/c he/she knows best, or
uses most.” Lifelong learning- learning that is pursue throughout life… Communicative
competence – the other end goal and it means the ability of the learner to understand and
used language appropriately to communicate in authentic situations. In MTB- MLE , it
includes two or more than two languages.

 MTB-MLE - An education program for children who do not understand or speak the
official school language when they begin school. MTB MLE students learn to read
and write first in their mother tongue. They use their MT for learning as they learn to
understand, speak, read and write the official school language (and additional
languages according to the curriculum). They use both their MT and the official
language for learning in later grades. The goal of strong MTB MLE program is that
students will become fully bilingual, bi-literate and bicultural and achieve a quality
education.
 MLE - The use of two or more languages in the educational system. Often used
interchangeably with MTB MLE. However, a program that uses two or more
languages but not the mother tongue of the students is “MLE” but it is not “MTB
MLE”.
The United Nation Educational Scientific Organization (UNESCO)

 The United Nation Educational Scientific Organization (UNESCO) – supports mother

tongue instruction as a means of improving educational quality by building upon the
knowledge and experience of the learners and teachers.
 UNESCO advocates the used of mother tongue and celebrate the Mother Tongue
Day every February 21 each year.

Implementation of MTB-MLE in the Philippines

There is what we called Salient Features of the K-12 program or curriculum, and
MTBMLE is one of them.

 Piloting of MTBMLE was constitutionalized in 2009.

 Piloting was done as early as 2010 in selected schools, very few schools.
 Piloting started in 920 plus schools in all over the country in 2011- 2012.
 S.Y 2012-2013 the nationwide implementation of MTBMLE has started, so the
program has been implemented from kindergarten to grade 3. TAGALOG (Metro
Manila)

A. Local languages used in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education

 AKLANON
 Aklanon, also known as Aklan, is an Austronesian language of the Bisayan
subgroup spoken by the Aklanon people in the province of Aklan on the island of
Panay in the Philippines.

Aklanon (Akeanon), also known as Bisaya/Binisaya nga Aklanon/Inaklanon or simply

Aklan, is an Austronesian language of the Bisayan subgroup spoken by the Aklanon people
in the province of Aklan on the island of Panay in the Philippines. Its unique feature among
other Bisayan languages is the close-mid back unrounded vowel [ɤ] occurring as part of
diphthongs and traditionally written with the letter ⟨Ee⟩ such as in the autonyms Akean and
Akeanon. However, this phoneme is also present in other but geographically scattered and
distant Philippine languages, namely Itbayat, Isneg, Manobo, Samal and Sagada. The
Malaynon dialect is 93% lexically similar to Aklanon and retained the "l" sounds, which
elsewhere are often pronounced as "r". Ibayjanon (Ibajaynon) dialect has shortened versions
of Aklanon words. (en)

 TAGALOG
 Was originally native to the southern part of Luzon, prior to spreading of a
second language over all the island of Philippine. Tagalog was spoken in the
Philippine capital, Manila.

Tagalog is one of the major languages of the Republic of the Philippines. It functions
as its lingua franca and de fcto national working language of the country. It is used as the
basis for the development of Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, a country with
181 documented languages. It is spoken in central and southern Luzon, in Manila, the
capital of the Philippines, and on some of the other islands. According to the Philippine
Census of 2000, 21.5 million people claim Tagalog as their first language. In addition, it is
estimated that 50 million Filipinos speak Tagalog as a second language. English is the
language of higher education and a lingua franca in the Philippines, second only to Filipino.
Many Filipinos who are fluent in English frequently switch between Tagalog and English for a
variety of reasons. This mixed language is called Taglish. It is more common among
educated city dwellers than in rural areas. Frequent contact between Tagalog-speaking and
Spanish-speaking people during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines has resulted in
Philippine Creole Spanish known as Chabacano. Since 1940, Filipino has been taught in
schools throughout the Philippines. Tagalog is also the language of major literary works, of
films, and of the media.

 KAPAMPANGAN
 WARAY (Samar, Leyte, Biliran) - Waray (also known as Waray-Waray) is an
Austronesian language and the fifth-most-spoken
 native regional language of the Philippines, native to Eastern Visayas.
 3.6 million native speakers.
 It is the native language of the Waray people and second language of the
Abaknon people of Capul, Northern Samar and some Cebuano - speaking
peoples of western and southern parts of Leyte island.

Kapampangan is an Austronesian language, and one of the eight major languages of

the Philippines. It is the primary and predominant language of the entire province of
Pampanga and southern Tarlac, on the southern part of Luzon's central plains geographic
region, most of whom belong to the Kapampangan ethnic group. Kapampangan is also
spoken in northeastern Bataan, as well as in the municipalities of Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, and
Zambales that border Pampanga. It is further spoken as a second language by a few Aeta
groups in the southern part of Central Luzon. The language is known honorifically as
Amánung Sísuan ("breastfed, or nurtured, language").

 PANGASINAN
 (Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Zambales that border
Pangasinan and few Aeta groups in Central Luzon)- The Pangasinan people was
referred as Pangasinense.
 The term Pangasinan can refer to the indigenous speakers of the Pangasinan
language or people of Pangasinan heritage.
 Pangasinan (Pangasinense) is an Austronesian language, and one of the eight
major languages of the Philippines.

Pangasinan (Pangasinense) is an Austronesian language, and one of the eight major

languages of the Philippines. It is the primary and predominant language of the entire
province of Pangasinan and northern Tarlac, on the northern part of Luzon's central plains
geographic region, most of whom belong to the Pangasinan ethnic group. Pangasinan is
also spoken in southwestern La Union, as well as in the municipalities of Benguet, Nueva
Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, and Zambales that border Pangasinan. A few Aeta groups in Central
Luzon's northern part also understand and even speak Pangasinan as well.

Austronesian language- formerly Malayo-Polynesian languages, family of

languages spoken in most of the Indonesian archipelago; all of the
Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South Pacific (except
for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia; and scattered areas of
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. In terms of the number of its languages and of
their geographic spread, the Austronesian language family is among the world’s largest.

 ILOKO (La Union, Ilocos, Pangasinan)

 The name Ilocano come from i– ‘from’ +looc ‘bay’ + –ano Spanish
‘native of,’ thus ‘people of the

bay’.Ilocano (also Ilokano; Ilocano: Pagsasao nga Ilokano) is an

  Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines, primarily by Ilocano people.
 Ilocano is spoken in northwest Luzon, The Babuyan Islands, Cordillera Administrative
Region, Cagayan Valley, northern parts of Central
 Luzon, Mindoro and scattered areas in Mindanao (the Soccsksargen region
in particular).The language is also spoken in the United States, with Hawaii and
California having the largest number of speakers.

Ilocano is spoken as a first language by some 7 million people, primarily in Northern

Luzon, La Union and Ilocos provinces, Cagayan Valley, Babuyan, Mindoro, and Mindanao. It
is also spoken as a second language by possibly another 2 million speakers in the northern
areas of Luzon as a lingua franca in trade, commerce, and everyday communication. Many
ethnic groups from the northern regions of the country are more proficient in Ilocano than in
Tagalog, the national language. Nevertheless, at present, Ilocano remains a regional
language with no official status. Its use in education is limited to the early elementary grades.

 BIKOL
 The Bikol languages or Bicolano languages are a group of
Central Philippine languages spoken mostly in the Bicol Peninsula in the island
of Luzon, the neighboring island province of Catanduanes and the island of
Burias in Masbate.
 The people of the Bicol Region, called Bicolanos, speak any of the several
languages of the Bikol language family, called Bikol macrolanguages.
 The four major groups of language in Bikol are Coastal Bikol, Inland Bikol,
Pandan Bikol and Bisakol. The majority of Bicolanos understand and
 speak Central Bikol language.

Central Bikol commonly called Bikol Naga, also known simply as Bikol, is an
Austronesian language spoken by the Bicolanos, primarily in the Bicol Region of southern
Luzon, Philippines. It is spoken in the northern and western part of Camarines Sur, second
congressional district of Camarines Norte, eastern part of Albay, northeastern part of
Sorsogon, San Pascual town in Masbate, and southwestern part of Catanduanes. Central
Bikol speakers can be found in all provinces of Bicol and it is a majority language in
Camarines Sur. The standard sprachraum form is based on the Canaman dialect. Central
Bikol features some vocabularies that are not found in other Bikol languages nor to other
members of the Central Philippine language family like Tagalog and Cebuano. Examples of
these are words the matua and bitis which are the same with Kapampangan words that
means older and foot/feet respectively. The word banggi (night) is another example of this as
it is different from the usual Bikol word "gab-i" but closer to the word bengi of Kapampangan.
There's no formal study about the relationship of the Central Luzon languages to Central
Bikol but the latter has several words that are also found in the archaic form of Tagalog
spoken in the Rizal and Quezon provinces that are believed to be the home of Central Luzon
languages such as Kapampangan in Pampanga and southern Tarlac, and Sambalic
languages in Zambales province.

 CEBUANO

Cebuano, also referred to by most of its speakers simply and generically as Binisaya
(translated into English as Visayan, though this should not be confused with other Bisayan
languages), is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines. It originated
on the island of Cebu, which is the source of Standard Cebuano, and now is spoken
primarily by various Visayan ethnolinguistic groups native to the islands of Cebu, Bohol,
Siquijor, the eastern half of Negros, the western half of Leyte (primary language), and the
northern coastal areas of Northern Mindanao and the Zamboanga Peninsula. In modern
times, it has also spread to the Davao Region, Cotabato, Camiguin, parts of the Dinagat
Islands, and the lowland regions of Caraga; often displacing native languages in those areas
(most of which are closely related to Cebuano).

It is the second most spoken language in the Philippines after Tagalog.

Cebuano is used as the medium of instruction in Grades I and II.  Cebuano is a member of
the Visayan language family. While Tagalog has the largest number of native speakers
among the languages of the Philippines today, Cebuano had the largest native-language-
speaking population in the Philippines from the 1950s until about the 1980s. It is by far the
most widely spoken of the Bisayan languages. Cebuano is the lingua franca of the Central
Visayas, western parts of Eastern Visayas, some western parts of Palawan and most parts
of Mindanao.

 HILIGAYNON

Hiligaynon, also often referred to as Ilonggo or Binisaya nga Hiniligaynon/Inilonggo, is an

Austronesian regional language spoken in the Philippines by about 9.1 million people,
predominantly in Western Visayas and SOCCSKSARGEN, most of whom belong to the
Hiligaynon people. It is the second-most widely spoken language in the Visayas and belongs
to the Bisayan languages, and is more distantly related to other Philippine languages.

It also has one of the largest native language-speaking populations of the

Philippines, despite it not being taught and studied formally in schools and universities until
2012. Hiligaynon is mainly concentrated in the regions of Western Visayas (Iloilo, Capiz,
Guimaras, and Negros Occidental), as well as in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and North
Cotabato in SOCCSKSARGEN. It is also spoken in other neighboring provinces, such as
Antique and Aklan (also in Western Visayas), Negros Oriental in Central Visayas, Masbate
in Bicol Region, Romblon and Palawan in MIMAROPA. It is also spoken as a second
language by Kinaray-a speakers in Antique, Aklanon/Malaynon speakers in Aklan, Capiznon
speakers in Capiz and Cebuano speakers in Negros Oriental. There are approximately
9,300,000 people in and out of the Philippines who are native speakers of Hiligaynon and an
additional 5,000,000 capable of speaking it with a substantial degree of proficiency.

Hiligaynon’s closest relatives are Capiznon, Masbatenyo, and Porohanon. Hiligaynon

is the fourth largest of the 175 languages spoken in the Philippines. It is distinctive from most
Filipino languages for its sing-song intonation, much like Italian, particularly in the
Bacolodnon dialect.

Ethnologue lists 3 varieties of Hiligaynon:

 Hiligaynon
 Kawayan (spoken on the island of Biliran)
 Kari

 WARAY

Waray (also known as Waray-Waray or Bisaya/Binisaya nga Winaray/Waray) is an

Austronesian language and the fifth-most-spoken native regional language of the
Philippines, native to Eastern Visayas. It is one of the ten officially recognized regional
languages in the Philippines and used in the local government. It is spoken throughout the
Visayas islands. It is the native language of the Waray people and second language of the
Abaknon people of Capul, Northern Samar, and some Cebuano-speaking peoples of
western and southern parts of Leyte island. it is also spoken in some parts of Mindanao,
Masbate, Sorsogon and Metro Manila where Warays went to. There is also a very small
number of Filipinos abroad, especially in the United States, that speaks this language. It is
the third most spoken language among the Bisayan languages, only behind Cebuano and
Hiligaynon. 
 The Waraynon group of languages consists of Waray, Waray Sorsogon and Masbate
Sorsogon. All the Warayan languages belong to the Visayan language family and are related
to Cebuano and more closely to Hiligaynon and Masbatenyo.

 TAUSUG

Tausug (Bahasa Sūg; Malay: Bahasa Suluk) is an Austronesian language spoken

by about 1 million people particularly on the Sulu Archipelago (Sulu, Tawi- Tawi, Basilan),
the Zamboanga Peninsula(Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga del
Sur and Zamboanga City), Southern Palawan in the Philippines, in Sabah in Malaysia,
and in Kalimantan in Indonesia by Tausug people.

The Tausug language belongs to the East Mindanao Subgroup of Central Philippine
languages. Its closest affiliation is with Butuanun, spoken at the mouth of the Agusan River
(northeast Mindanao), from which it is believed to have separated some 900 years ago. It
also exhibits extensive linguistic convergence with Sama-Bajau, indicating a long and close
association. Tausug shows little dialectal variation and served historically as the lingua
franca of the Sulu sultanate. A Malay-Arabic script is used for religious and other writings.

These days Tausūg is written with the Latin alphabet. From the 7th century it is written
with a version of the Arabic alphabet based on the Malaysian Jawi script. Tausūg was also
written with a version of the Baybayin script known as Luntar Sug from the 7th century until
the 16th century.

 MAGUINDANAOAN

Maguindanao is also known as Maguindanaon, Magindanao, Magindanaon,

Magindanaw, Maguindanao or Maguindanaw is an Austronesian language spoken by a
majority of the population of Maguindanao province in the Philippines. It is a member of the
Greater Central Philippine branch of the Philippine language family. It is spoken by 1.1
million people, mainly in Maguindanao provinces (Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao
del Sur) in the south of Mindanao island in the Philippines, and is also spoken by sizable
minorities in different parts of Mindanao such as the cities of Zamboanga, Davao, and
General Santos, and the provinces of North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato,
Sarangani, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, as well as Metro Manila. This
was the language of the historic Sultanate of Maguindanao (1520–1905), which existed
before and during the Spanish colonial period from 1521 to 1898. There are three main
dialects: Taw sa ilud, Taw sa laya and Biwangen. It is closely related to Iranun, which is
spoken in the same area.

 MARANAO

Maranao people are known for their artwork, weaving, wood, plastic and metal crafts and
epic literature, the Darangen. They are ethnically and culturally closely related to the
Iranun (was once considered a dialect of Maranao), and Maguindanao which are spoken in
Sabah, Malaysia, and in parts of the Philippines. All three groups being denoted as
speaking Danao languages and giving name to the island of Mindanao.

Maranao (Mëranaw) is an Austronesian language spoken by the Maranao people in

the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur provinces in the Philippines, and
in Sabah, Malaysia. There are thought to be between 800,000 and a million speakers.
Maranao is written with the Latin alphabet, though in the past it was written with a version of
the Arabic script, like Malay.

Unique among other Danao languages, Maranao is spoken with a

distinct downstep accent, as opposed to stress accent]. Additionally, Maranao features
aspirated "hard consonants", which also raise the quality of following vowels.

 CHABACANO

Chavacano or Chabacano is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties

spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the
southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of speakers
and Christian-majority towns of Basilan. Other currently existing varieties are found in Cavite
City and Ternate, located in the Cavite province and previously in Ermita, Cotabato City,
and Davao. The languages derives most of its vocabulary from Spanish, but the word order
and grammar derives from the native languages such as Tagalog and Hiligaynon.
Chabacano, stands out as Asia's only Spanish-based creole language and the only
non-Austronesian language to have developed in the Philippines. As a creole language,
Chabanaco is a mixture of Spanish and indigenous languages that evolved from a history
of colonial interactions between Spain and the Philippines. It is estimated that there are
more than 600,000 Chabacano speakers in the country today. There are two main varities
of Chavacano in Zamboanga - a formal variety that contains more Spanish vocabulary, and
an informal variety containing more vocabulary from Tagalog, Cebuano and other
Philippine languages.

Chavacano is used primarily as a spoken language which dates back to 1635,

when Zamboanga became a permanent Spanish stronghold with the construction of the
San José Fortress. As a general orthographic rule, all words of Spanish/European and
Mexican origin are spelt according to their original spelling in the Spanish alphabet. Words
from Philippine languages are spelt in the native way along Spanish rules. For
example: jendeh, meaning no or not, is not spelled as hinde because h is always silent in
the Spanish alphabet, thus it is not spelled as in Tagalog.

There are six dialects of Chavacano, each with a number of different names:
 Zamboanga dialect (about 360,000 speakers): Zamboangueño,
Chavacano/Chabacano/Chabakano de Zamboanga

 Cavite dialect (about 200,000 speakers): Caviteño, Chavacano/Chabacano/Chabakano

de Cavite, Caviten, Linguaje di Niso, Tsabakano

 Ermita dialect: Ermiteño or Ermitaño (practically extinct)

 Ternate dialect (about 7,000 speakers): Ternateño Chabacano, Bahra, Linguaje di

Bahra.

 Davao dialect (about 18,000 speakers): Davaoeño, Davaweño, Davawenyo,

Davawenyo Zamboangenyo, Abakay Spanish, Davao
Chabacano/Chavacano/Chabakano.

Cotabato dialect (about 20,500 speakers): Cotabateño, Cotabato

Chabacano/Chavacano/Chabakano
 B. Good Practices in Mother Tongue-First Multilingual Education

What is Mother Tongue-First Multilingual Education?

In 2012, the Department of Education (DepEd) implemented the use of Mother

Tongue-based Multilingual Education in all public schools, specifically in Grades 1, 2,
and 3. In multilingual education programs (MLE) that start with the mother tongue,
learners use their own language for learning in the early grades, while also learning
the official language as a classroom subject.

Good Practices in Mother Tongue-First Multilingual Education

Programme planning

Parents and other stakeholders understand the rationale and principles of MT-first MLE. It
must be reliable and has a sustainable funding source. Moreover, must be engaging
enough.

Orthography development

Acceptable within language community, to government – systematic, multi-agency

approaches and supportive for transfer between languages.

Curriculum development

Develop standards and indicators for multilingual education based on national curriculum
guidelines. Supportive for transfer to other school systems and it include themes and topics
that are reflective of learners’ everyday life.

Instructional materials

Reflective of culture and world view of learners. Able to be used by teachers with limited
formal training. Supportive for transfer between languages.

Literature development

Materials that begin with the experiences of the learners. Methods replicable in the
community for sustainable literature development to support programme expansion.
Materials that preserve and develop the culture and values of the language community.

Teacher identification and training

Teachers who are respected by the local community. Cascading training through
approaches which train trainers. Training for educational administrators and supervisors.

What are the indicators of strong MLE programmes?

Time
  Challenges we have observed:
 Short, early-exit programmes Rapid implementation (short preparatory phase) Short
pilot programmes Thai – “successfully and quickly”!
Training

 Awareness raising for parents and other community stakeholders

 Training for teachers in MLE specific pedagogical and curriculum issues
 Training for teachers from minority language communities
 Training for educational administrators or supervisors
Tools

 Multi-agency process towards an agreed writing system

 Reading materials in L1 to promote reading fluency as a foundation for skills transfer
 Advocacy and awareness raising strategies for stakeholders
 Testing, evaluation and documentation procedures.

C. THEORIES OF MULTILINGUALISM

Linguistic Theory in Multilingualism

This topic discusses a common reality in many cases of multilingualism: heritage

speakers, or unbalanced bilinguals, simultaneous or sequential, who shifted early in
childhood from one language (their heritage language) to their dominant language (the
language of their speech community). To demonstrate the relevance of heritage linguistics to
the study of linguistic competence more broadly defined, we present a series of case studies
on heritage linguistics, documenting some of the deficits and abilities typical of heritage
speakers.

Since its inception, the generative tradition within linguistic theory has concerned itself
primarily with monolingual speakers in its quest for what we know when we know (a)
language. The object of study, linguistic competence, or grammar, instantiates in and
emerges from the brains of human speakers. Grammar cannot get loaded onto a
microscope slide or set upon a scale; it gets accessed through its effects on naturally-
developing speakers who employ the grammar in their native language du jour. Grammar
informs and determines linguistic behavior; linguists study grammar by studying the behavior
of speakers and making generalizations about the idealized state of mind of these speakers.

The investigation of grammar is necessarily a circuitous enterprise: we observe

linguistic competence through linguistic performance, the situation-specific deployment of
grammar. But extra-linguistic factors influence performance, so linguists help themselves to
various domain restrictions in an attempt to limit noise in the translation from competence to
performance. Chomsky (1965, p. 4) provides an early description of the obstacle to be
overcome: “The problem for the linguist, as well as for the child learning the language, is to
determine from the data of performance the underlying system of rules that has been
mastered by the speaker-hearer and that he puts to use in actual performance.” Chomsky
also provides an early characterization of one strategy for meeting this obstacle, focusing the
linguist's attention on idealized, untainted language users.

What is Linguistic Theory?

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely

homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by
such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of
attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the
language in actual performance. (Chomsky, 1965, p. 3)

The rapid ascension of formal linguistics over the intervening five decades has
demonstrated the success of this focused approach to the study of language (for a similar
line of discussion, see Lohndal, 2013). A great deal of progress has been made to move
beyond “grammars” in the traditional sense—comprehensive descriptions of language-
specific regularities and their exceptions—to grammar in the Chomskyan sense: the rules
and processes that generate those regularities in the first place.

Still, Chomsky's counsel necessarily excludes from study a wide swath of the world's
language users, communities, and even languages. Put simply, the majority of speakers and
speaking contexts fail to meet the admittedly idealized criteria above. But even ignoring the
“grammatically irrelevant conditions” that govern the use of language, what do we make of
the multitudes of speakers who may claim imperfect competence in more than one
language? So far in the history of generative linguistics, the answer to this question has
been “not much.” Citing the wealth of data that gets ignored in such an unrealistic exclusion,
together with the unique questions these data stand to answer, Benmamoun et al. (2013b, p.
129) propose we augment our study of language by “shifting linguistic attention from the
model of a monolingual speaker to the model of a multilingual speaker.” Similarly, Rothman
and Treffers-Daller (2014) contend that multilingual speakers should be considered native in
more than one language and call for a revision of the overall concept of a well-rounded
native speaker. We follow these authors in focusing our attention on a subset of multilingual
language users: heritage speakers.
 Before turning to the case studies, the remainder of this introduction describes the
population of interest as it is typically characterized, together with various proposals meant
to account for the unique linguistic competence of heritage speakers.

Introducing Heritage Speakers

To illustrate the defining characteristics of a heritage speaker, we begin with a few

hypothetical examples. For starters, meet Samantha. Her family is from Korea, but she was
born in Los Angeles and has never travelled to Korea. While in Los Angeles, Samantha grew
up immersed in the rich Korean culture that is prevalent there (Los Angeles has the largest
Korean-American population in the USA). Samantha went to a Korean Sunday school when
she was a child, and she still uses Korean with her family and at church. However, she is
more comfortable speaking in English; and although she reads Korean, she prefers reading
in English. Samantha is always rather nervous about her Korean not being good enough for
her family.

Margot is only a hundred or so miles south of Samantha, living in a secluded area in La

Jolla, California (outside of San Diego). Her family moved there from Russia when she was
three, and her younger siblings were all born in La Jolla. Her father still has some business
in Russia, but Margot and her siblings rarely go there. They prefer traveling to Western
Europe, where everybody speaks English and they have an easier time communicating.
When Margot and her siblings meet other Russians, they are always a bit suspicious of them
and do not socialize too much.

Robert was born in Frankfurt, but when he was just a few months old, his family moved
to Abu Dhabi, where his father worked as a banker. He had an Arabic-speaking nanny and
went to an international school, but socialized with Arabic-speaking children (they all shared
a passion in soccer). Robert moved back to Germany when he was 15, got his education in
Germany, and is currently living in Berlin where he works as a graphic designer. He is still in
touch with his friends in Abu Dhabi—they connect over social media—and it is his hope to
save enough money to travel back to the place where he spent his childhood.

Shawn was born in Canada. His mother is Japanese and his father is British, fluent in
Japanese. The family moved to Japan when Shawn was a toddler. He has received all of his
education in Japanese, and although he has had a fair amount of English instruction and
speaks English with his father now, as a young adult, he is more comfortable in Japanese.
Recently, he took a course in American literature in his college; whenever possible, he tried
to read the assigned books in a Japanese translation, which he found much easier than the
original English.

What do these people have in common? They were all exposed to a certain language in
their childhood, but then switched to another language, the dominant language of their
society, later in their childhood. These are unbalanced bilinguals, sequential (Doris and
Margot) or simultaneous (Robert, Shawn, Samantha), whose home language is much less
present in their linguistic repertoire than the dominant language of their society. They may
have gotten there in different ways, but they are all heritage speakers.

Narrowly defined, heritage speakers are individuals who were raised in homes where a
language other than the dominant community language was spoken, resulting in some
degree of bilingualism in the heritage language and the dominant language (Valdés, 2000).
A heritage speaker may also be the child of an immigrant family who abruptly shifted from
her first language to the dominant language of her new community. Crucially, the heritage
speaker began learning the heritage language before, or concurrently with, the language
which would become the stronger language. That bilingualism may be imbalanced, even
heavily imbalanced, in favor of the dominant language, but some abilities in the heritage
language persist.

Heritage speakers present a unique testbed for issues of acquisition, maintenance, and
transfer within linguistic theory. In contrast to the traditional acquisition trajectory of idealized
monolinguals, heritage speakers do not seem to exhibit native-like mastery of their first
language in adulthood. As the definition of the heritage speaker makes clear, this apparent
near-native acquisition owes to a shift of the learner's attention during childhood to a
different dominant/majority language. However, the specifics of this attainment trajectory are
anything but clear.

Dominant Language Transfer

An important point of contact between heritage speakers and second language

learners lacking from traditional L1 acquisition is the interplay between the learner's first
(heritage) language and second (dominant) language. Language transfer, or the nature of
that particular interplay, is a foundational issue in second language acquisition research: to
what extent does the first language grammar play a role in shaping the developing second
language grammar? The effects of the native language on the acquisition of a second
language in different levels of linguistic analysis (e.g., phonology, morphology, syntax,
semantics, or the lexicon) have been extensively documented in the second language
acquisition literature (e.g., Odlin, 1989; White, 1989; Gass and Selinker, 1992; Schwartz and
Sprouse, 1996; Jarvis, 1998).

Affordances Theory in Multilingualism

The theory of affordances can actually provide a valuable, supplementary, up-to-date

frame work within which a clearer, sharper description and explication of the intriguing range
of attributes of multilingual communities, educational institutions and individuals, as well as
teaching practices, become feasible. The concept of affordances originating in Gibson’s
work (Gibson, 1977), is gaining momentum in multilingualism studies.

Who is the proponent of this theory?

James J. Gibson, in full James Jerome Gibson, (born January 27, 1904, Ohio, U.S.—
died December 11, 1979, Ithaca, New York), American psychologist whose theories of visual
perception were influential among some schools of psychology and philosophy in the late
20th century. James Jerome Gibson, is one of the most important contributors to the field of
visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs
conscious visual perception, and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind
directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or
processing. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked him as the
88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, David Rumelhart,
Louis Leon Thurstone, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.

Gibson created a highly influential theory of “affordances”.

Gibson coined the noun affordance. For Gibson the noun affordance
pertains to the environment providing the opportunity for action.
Affordances require a relationship in which the environment and the
animal can work together. An example is that mankind has changed
the environment to better suit our needs. When coming across
Earth's natural steep slopes, man designed stairs in order to afford
walking. In addition, objects in the environment can also afford many different behaviors,
such as lifting or grasping. Gibson argued that when we perceive an object, we observe the
object's affordances and not its particular qualities. He believed that perceiving affordances
of an object is easier than perceiving the many different qualities an object may have.
Affordances can be related to different areas of the habitat as well. Some areas of the world
allow for concealing while some allow for foraging.

Definition of Affordances

Gibson notes that while the verb to afford is in the dictionary, the noun affordance is
not. He had made it up. It is worth remembering that Gibson developed his affordance
concept not with reference to the social or human sciences, but in its application to physics,
optics, anatomy and the physiology of eye and brain. His creation of the affordances notion
came out of his interest in vision and perception, first with regard to animals in the natural
environment and then, by extension, to human beings. The widely cited definition of
affordances by Gibson (1979/1986) runs as follows: “The affordances of the environment is
what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill”

What is Affordances Theory in Multilingualism

There is a need to further clarify the term affordances, its theoretical underpinning
and its advantages over other terms. Affordances is an expression commonly deployed in
contemporary sociolinguistic work, yet its meaning is rarely specified to the extent of
furnishing an explanation of what exactly is provided by the term affordances which goes
beyond the denotation of existing terms. What is routinely called “the theory of affordances”
is not a fully-fledged theory, but rather a conceptual understanding shared across many
fields.

“This is not the world of physics, but the world at the level of ecology”, explains
Gibson (1979/1986, p. 2). Remarkably, the ecological approach renders Gibson’s vision
closer to the field of society and language and language teaching and learning. Gibson
emphasized the importance of environment and context in learning. Perception is important
because it allows humans to adapt to their environment. The affordances of language in
society – be it in the area of instruction and didactics or in the more general field of
education and social context, draw from the original Gibson’s literally ecological views but
translate into something somewhat different in form, type, scale and manifestation, as they
refer to the social dimension in greater measure than they refer to purely physical dimension.
 Different physical dispositions and characteristics afford different behaviors for
different animals, including the human species, and different kinds of encounters. The same
objects or events can present different affordances for different actors; thus, for instance,
grass presents different ranges of affordances for birds, animals and for people. In the same
way, a book in a foreign language presents different affordances for learners and users with
differing levels of mastery of this language.

Gibson’s Key Points in Affordances Theory

In search of further insights, let us address some of Gibson’s original insights which
we feel are especially important in the context of a discussion of multilingualism and
additional language learning. These elements recur as leitmotifs through his books, but have
not, to our knowledge, been given the attention they warrant. The relevant key elements we
are thinking of are:

 Affordances being furnished according to the size of an animal;

 The mutuality of animal and environment;
 Nesting;
 Information about the self-accompanying information about the environment, the two
being inseparable.

 Information about the self-accompanying information about the environment,

the two being inseparable.

We will begin with the last of these, to which we wish to give special emphasis,
because it has not yet been, as far as we know, directly connected to the teaching, learning
and use of multiple languages although it has a considerable bearing on it. This point,
information about the self, to our mind, corresponds with and complements awareness
phenomena, also a recently developing topic. Here is what Gibson says about this issue:
“Information about the self, accompanies information about the environment, and the two are
inseparable. Perception has two poles, the subjective and the objective, and information is
available to specify both. One perceives the environment and coperceives oneself”.

The concept of linguistic and metalinguistic awareness (see, e.g., Jessner, 2006)
also has to do with information about the self. It turns the attention of the language
apprentice towards the language(s) she/he is concerned with and towards him/herself as a
language learner and language user. When the two are coupled and placed in the context of
affordances, information about the self receives more shades and aspects and is seen to
manifest an active, dynamic role in the language learning enterprise. In the same way as
animals need to be aware of their location, as well as the disposition of objects and other
animals, for successful hunting, eating, or hiding, so language users and language learners
need to be aware of their needs, of where they stand with regard to other languages and
other speakers, of their progress as language acquirers, and of the prospects for further
language acquisition and for language use.

To see “where we are” at each particular moment is a biological necessity for survival
(in the widest sense of this word). In sociolinguistic terms, the global locomotion of speakers
and languages – mobility – is always opening up new horizons for language users and giving
them an awareness of the possibilities and the importance of deploying other languages.
Looking around and getting around are important not only in relation to visual perception but
also, in humans, in relation to language use. To apperceive which language(s) and to which
extent is/are needful for a person or a group in particular circumstances is of universal
practical importance. This is what we must weigh in our everyday and long-term language-
related decisions, as individuals and as communities. It is what educational authorities and
political groups must constantly come back to in the language domain – evaluating the
affordances and contemplating which affordances require to be added or removed. With
respect to second language learning this points to the importance of a variety of
indispensable kinds of self-monitoring. The implication of Gibson’s idea is that second
language teachers need to supply the affordances for such self-observation – for learners to
be able, for instance, to situate the skills they have gained in a given language at particular
times and in particular places in their relation to their skills in other languages, and to be able
to reflect on their learning aims.

 Affordances being furnished according to the size of an animal

In the context of acquiring and using language this postulate implies that affordances are
always connected with the features of the learner and user as well as with the features of a
language learnt and used. It also translates into the specificity of affordances for each actor;
that is, what an affordance is for one person or group of learner-users does not correspond
to what it is for another individual or group. It is clear, for example, that affordances for
speakers of a heritage language would be different from affordances for speakers of a
national or official language in the same setting.
 Alternatively, an affordance may be perceived by some learner-users as an affordance
which is not worth making anything of. Thus, it happens regularly in the immigration context
that some immigrants, often the older ones, feel they will not be able to learn a new
language, and so rely on continuing to communicate in their own language by living in their
“bubble” – the family or community where the language of origin is regularly used. The
affordances, that is, native speakers, books, culture, second language exposure, situations
in which the use of the second language was appropriate were many, but were not utilized
by thousands of people. Within the framework of second language teaching this notion that
“affordances are furnished according to the size of an animal” tells us that it is sensible to
individualize approaches to designing courseware, and methods and techniques of
teaching/learning strategies.

 The mutuality of animal and environment

With regard to the mutuality of animal and environment, according to Gibson

(1979/1986), this signifies that the observer and the environment are complementary. For
human beings the links to the environment, that is, social milieu, are not limited to the
physical dimension, as in the case of animals. The emotional, moral, evaluative and
intentional and cognitive vectors are no less real for people than the material composition of
their environment. All of these, separately and together, offer a variety of affordances of
different kinds and scope. With regard to the field of multilingualism and additional language
acquisition we would define Gibson’s point in terms of dynamic mutuality of identity and
milieu. The dynamic mutuality of identity and milieu is both a process and a result as each
specific moment and each particular sociolinguistic situation provides a specific set of
affordances. It is for educators, teachers and learners to make use of all the relevant
affordances, or some part of them, or none of them.

 Nesting

The fourth key element is nesting, as termed by Gibson (1979/1986). According to him,
nesting refers to the fact that “smaller units are embedded in the larger units”, as canyons
are nested within mountains, trees are nested within canyons and leaves are nested within
trees. Nesting corresponds to (but is not the same as) the notion of niche in globalization
studies and scaling properties in the complexity approach. An example of an affordance
“nested” in a small area is the affordance for the unique whistle language used by the local
inhabitants in the sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico – the Mazatecs. Specific geographical
conditions, namely the rugged highland areas virtually without level ground, the hilly,
mountainous terrain, and the profusion of valleys, can be seen as the particular set of
affordances which lead to Mazatecs’ unique way of communicating over long distances (over
2 km) without the use of phones. Another example of a very small-scale phenomenon is the
case of Boa Sr of the Andaman Islands, who had lived through the 2004 tsunami, the
Japanese occupation and the diseases originally brought by British settlers; this person was
the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo. Her recent death effectively annuls
the affordance for this language. More generally, in language learning it typically is the case
that smaller units (e.g., a family) have a different range of affordances than larger units (e.g.,
a school).

IV. EXERCISES

TEST I. Identification

1. ________ an education program for children who do not understand or speak the
official school language when they begin school. MTB MLE students learn to read
and write first in their mother tongue.
2. ________ This language is spoken in the province of Surigao del Norte, Dinagat
Islands, Surigao del Sur, and some portions of Agusan del Norte, especially the
towns near the Mainit Lake, Agusan del Sur and Davao Oriental.
3. ________ It is the native language of the Yakan people, the
indigenous as well as the largest ethnic group on the island. It has a total of
110,000 native speakers.
4. ________ It is a Sambalic language spoken primarily in the Zambal
municipalities of Santa Cruz, Candelaria, Masinloc, Palauig,and Iba, and
in the Pangasinense municipality of Infanta in the Philippines
5. ________ it functions as its lingua franca and de fcto national working language
of the country. It is used as the basis for the development of Filipino, the national
language of the Philippines, a country with 181 documented languages.
6. ________ it is the native language of the Waray people and second language of
the Abaknon people of Capul, Northern Samar and some Cebuano - speaking
peoples of western and southern parts of Leyte island.
7. ________ is an Austronesian language, and one of the eight major languages of
the Philippines. It is the primary and predominant language of the entire province
of Pangasinan and northern Tarlac, on the northern part of Luzon's central plains
geographic region, most of whom belong to the Pangasinan ethnic group.
 8. ________ is a language that stands out as Asia's only Spanish-based creole
language and the only non-Austronesian language to have developed in the
Philippines.
9. __________ is an Austronesian language spoken by about 1 million people
particularly on the Sulu Archipelago, the Zamboanga Peninsula, Southern
Palawan, in Sabah, and in Kalimantan in Indonesia.
10. Waray is an Austronesian language and the fifth-most-spoken native regional
language of the Philippines, native to__________.
11. The Department of Education (DepEd) implemented this in all public
schools, specifically in Grades 1, 2, and 3.
12. Acceptable within language community, to government – systematic, multi-
agency approaches and supportive for transfer between languages.
13. Teachers who are respected by the local community. Cascading training
through approaches which train trainers. Training for educational
administrators and supervisors.
14. Parents and other stakeholders understand the rationale and principles of
MT-first MLE. It must be reliable and has a sustainable funding source.
Moreover, must be engaging enough.
15. These are the indicators of strong MLE programmes.

TEST II. Multiple Choice

1. He coined the noun affordance. For him, the noun affordance pertains to the
environment providing the opportunity for action.
a) James Jedrin Gibson
b) James Jerome Gibson
c) James Jerald Gibson
d) James Joseph Gibson

2. One of the Gibson’s key points in affordances theory which signifies that the observer
and the environment are complementary.
a) Affordances being furnished according to the size of an animal
b) The mutuality of animal and environment
c) Nesting
d) Information about the self-accompanying information about the environment, the two
being inseparable
 3. One of the Gibson’s key points in affordances theory which refers to the fact that
“smaller units are embedded in the larger units”.
a) Affordances being furnished according to the size of an animal
b) The mutuality of animal and environment
c) Nesting
d) Information about the self-accompanying the two being inseparable
4. It is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely
homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is
unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions.
a) Linguistic Theory
b) Affordances Theory
c) Nesting
d) Bilingualism

5. Heritage speakers are individuals who were raised in homes where a language other
than the dominant community language was spoken, resulting in some degree of
bilingualism in the heritage language and the dominant language.
a) True
b) False

Answer key:
TEST I

1. MTB-MLE
2. SURIGAONON
3. YAKAN
4. SAMBAL
5. TAGALOG
6. KAPAMPANGAN
7. PANGASINAN
8. CHABACANO
9. TAUSOG
10. EASTERN VISAYAS
11. MOTHER TONGUE-BASED MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION M
12. ORTHOGRAPHY DEVELOPMENT
13. TEACHER IDENTIFICATION AND TRAINING
14. PROGRAMME PLANNING
 15. TIME, TRAINING, AND TOOLS

TEST II.

1. B
2. B
3. C
4. A
5. A

V. SUMMARY
 Ybanag also Ybanag or Ibanak is an Austronesian language spoken by
up to 500,000 speakers, most particularly by the Ibanag people in
the Philippines in the northeastern province of Isabela and Cagayan.
 "bannag", meaning river
 The name Ibanag comes from the prefix "I" which means "people of", and
“bannag", meaning river.
 Ivatan also known as Chirin nu Ibatan ("language of the Ivatan people"), is a
Philippine language of Austronesian origins spoken in the Batanes
Islands of the Philippines.
 Sambal or Sambali is a Sambalic language spoken primarily in the
Zambal municipalities of Santa Cruz, Candelaria, Masinloc, Palauig,and
Iba, and in the Pangasinense municipality of Infanta in the
Philippines; speakers can also be found in Panitian, Quezon, Palawan and
Barangay Mandaragat or Buncag of Puerto Princesa.
 The Karay-a language, or Kinaray-a is an Austronesian regional
language spoken by the Karay-a people, mainly in Antique in the
Philippines, Iloilo and other provinces on the island of Panay, as well as
portions of the Soccsksargen region in Mindanao.
 Yakan is an Austronesian language primarily spoken onIsland in the
Philippines. It is the native language of the Yakan people, the
indigenous as well as the largest ethnic group on the island. It has a total of
110,000 native speakers.
 Surigaonon is an Austronesian language spoken by Surigaonon people. Asa
regional Philippine language, it is spoken in the province of Surigao del Norte,
Dinagat Islands, Surigao del Sur, and some portions of Agusan del Norte,
 especially the towns near the Mainit Lake, Agusan del Sur and Davao
Oriental.
 Aklanon, also known as Aklan, is an Austronesian language of the Bisayan
subgroup spoken by the Aklanon people in the province of Aklan on the island
of Panay in the Philippines.
 TAGALOG was originally native to the southern part of Luzon, prior to
spreading of a second language over all the island of Philippine. Tagalog was
spoken in the Philippine capital, Manila.
 KAPAMPANGAN is an Austronesian language, and one of the eight major
languages of the Philippines. It is the primary and predominant language of
the entire province of Pampanga and southern Tarlac, on the southern part of
Luzon's central plains geographic region, most of whom belong to the
Kapampangan ethnic group.
 Pangasinan (Pangasinense) is an Austronesian language, and one of
the eight major languages of the Philippines.
 Austronesian language- formerly Malayo-Polynesian languages, family of
languages spoken in most of the Indonesian archipelago; all of the
Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South
Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia;
and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. In terms of the
number of its languages and of their geographic spread, the Austronesian
language family is among the world’s largest.
 Iloko is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines, primarily by
Ilocano people.
 The Bikol languages or Bicolano languages are a group of Central Philippine
languages spoken mostly in the Bicol Peninsula in the island of Luzon, the
neighboring island province of Catanduanes and the island of Burias in
Masbate.
 Cebuano (aka Binisaya) originated on the island of Cebu, which is the source
of Standard Cebuano, and now is spoken primarily by various Visayan
ethnolinguistic groups. It is the second most spoken language in the
Philippines after Tagalog.
 Hiligaynon (Ilonggo or Binisaya nga Hiniligaynon/Inilonggo) is a language
spoken in the Philippines by about 9.1 million people, predominantly in
Western Visayas and SOCCSKSARGEN, most of whom belong to the
Hiligaynon people. It also has one of the largest native language-speaking
 populations of the Philippines. Ethnologue lists 3 varieties of Hiligaynon:
Hiligaynon, Kawayan, Kari.
 Waray (Waray-Waray or Bisaya/Binisaya nga Winaray/Waray) is a fifth-most-
spoken native regional language of the Philippines, native to Eastern Visayas.
It is the native language of the Waray people. The Waraynon group of
languages consists of Waray, Waray Sorsogon and Masbate Sorsogon.
 Tausug is an Austronesian language spoken by about 1 million people
particularly on the Sulu Archipelago, the Zamboanga Peninsula, Southern
Palawan in the Philippines, in Sabah in Malaysia, and in Kalimantan in
Indonesia by Tausug people.
 Maguindanao is also known as Maguindanaon, Magindanao, Magindanaon,
Magindanaw, Maguindanao or Maguindanaw is a spoken by a majority of the
population (1.1 million) of Maguindanao province in the Philippines. This was
the language of the historic Sultanate of Maguindanao (1520–1905), which
existed before and during the Spanish colonial period from 1521 to 1898.
There are three main dialects: Taw sa ilud, Taw sa laya and Biwangen.
 Maranao (Mëranaw) is an Austronesian language spoken by the Maranao
people in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur
provinces in the Philippines, and in Sabah, Malaysia. There are thought to be
between 800,000 and a million speakers.
 Chavacano or Chabacano is a group of Spanish-based creole language
varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga.
The languages derives most of its vocabulary from Spanish, but the word
order and grammar derives from the native languages such as Tagalog and
Hiligaynon. There are six dialects of Chavacano.
 In 2012, the Department of Education (DepEd) implemented the use of
Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education in all public schools, specifically
in Grades 1, 2, and 3.
 Curriculum development - develop standards and indicators for multilingual
education based on national curriculum guidelines.
 Orthography development - acceptable within language community, to
government – systematic, multi-agency approaches and supportive for
transfer between languages.
 Programme planning - parents and other stakeholders understand the
rationale and principles of MT-first MLE.
 Teacher identification and training - teachers who are respected by the
local community.
 Literature development - materials that begin with the experiences of the
learners.
 Instructional materials - reflective of culture and world view of learners.
 The indicators of strong MLE programmes are time, tool and training.
 Different physical dispositions and characteristics afford different behaviors
for different animals, including the human species, and different kinds of
encounters. The same objects or events can present different affordances for
different actors
 There is a need to further clarify the term affordances, its theoretical
underpinning and its advantages over other terms. Affordances is an
expression commonly deployed in contemporary sociolinguistic work, yet its
meaning is rarely specified to the extent of furnishing an explanation of what
exactly is provided by the term affordances which goes beyond the denotation
of existing terms.
 A set of affordances would include a variety of types: actions and material
objects, emotions and feelings, and social affordances relative to a given
community or country.
 In second language learning, for performing an action or realizing a goal –
such as memorizing ten words, understanding an L2 text, or, more
ambitiously, mastering the basic structure of a language – one separate
affordance is not enough. Rather, sets or packages of affordances are
required to be furnished in order that the action may be performed or the goal
achieved.
 The study of multilingualism has long been the intellectual property of
linguistics subfields like sociolinguistics and language acquisition, and with
good reason: we must understand the complexities of the multilingual
experience before we can analyze its exponence in language users. With this
limitation in mind, we began by considering the heterogeneity in just one sub-
population of multilinguals, namely heritage speakers. With a clearer picture
of the factors at play shaping the heritage grammar, we then presented case
studies appropriating heritage language study into core domains of linguistic
theory.
 We chose these case studies to highlight the breadth of heritage language
research and its implications for linguistic theory, but we also chose them to
 evidence some useful methods in its practice. A few practical themes
repeated themselves: establishment of a clear native baseline (a must for any
comparison); determination of the input to heritage language acquisition by
documenting the language of the parents (to locate the potential source of
reanalysis and differences from the language in the homeland); determination
of child heritage language behavior (to test for attrition over the lifespan);
comparison of dominant and heritage language ability in the same population
(to test for transfer, and its directionality). These practices help to narrow the
possible explanations for observed atypical language behavior, pointing to
both the trajectory and the outcome of grammatical phenomena in heritage
speakers.

VI. REFERENCES
Aklanon language. (n.d.). DBpedia. Retrieved November 2, 2022, from
https://dbpedia.org/page/Aklanon_language
MustGo Travel Agency. (2021, July 1). Tagalog Language - Dialects & Structure - MustGo.
MustGo.com. https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/tagalog/
Kapampangan language. (n.d.). DBpedia. Retrieved November 2, 2022, from
https://dbpedia.org/page/Kapampangan_language
Pangasinan language. (n.d.). DBpedia. Retrieved November 2, 2022, from
https://dbpedia.org/page/Pangasinan_language
MustGo Travel Agency. (2021a, July 1). Ilocano. MustGo.com.
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/ilokano/
Central Bikol language. (n.d.). DBpedia. Retrieved November 2, 2022, from
https://dbpedia.org/page/Central_Bikol_language

Cebuano language. DBpedia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from

https://dbpedia.org/page/Cebuano_language

Chavacano. Chavacano alphabet, prounciation and language. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30,
2022, from https://omniglot.com/writing/chavacano.php

Chavacano. Omniglot. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from

https://omniglot.com/writing/chavacano.php

Hiligaynon language. DBpedia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from

https://dbpedia.org/page/Hiligaynon_language
Maranao (Mëranaw). Maranao language and alphabet. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2022,
from https://omniglot.com/writing/maranao.htm

Maranao (Mëranaw). Omniglot. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from

https://omniglot.com/writing/maranao.htm

Mindanao Comprised About 24 Percent of the Philippines' Total Population. Philippine

Statistics Authority. (2005, June 8). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from
https://psa.gov.ph/content/mindanao-comprised-about-24-percent-philippines-total-
population

Omniglot. (n.d.). Tausūg (Bahasa sūg / ‫س سُوگ‬

َ ‫) َب َه‬. Tausūg language, alphabets and
pronunciation. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from
https://omniglot.com/writing/tausug.htm

Philippine local languages used in mother tongue based multilingual education . StuDocu.
(n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from
https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/university-of-perpetual-help-system-jonelta/
language-program-and-policies-in-multilingual-societies/philippine-local-languages-
used-in-mother-tongue-based-multilingual-education/32890936

Sather, C. (n.d.). Tausug. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-
maps/tausug

Waray language. DBpedia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from

https://dbpedia.org/page/Waray_language

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, October 1). Maguindanao language. Wikipedia. Retrieved

October 30, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maguindanao_language

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, October 1). Maguindanao language. Wikipedia. Retrieved

October 31, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maguindanao_language

Google. (n.d.). Good practices in mother-tongue first multilingual education - ppt download.
Google. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from
https://www.google.com/amp/s/slideplayer.com/amp/16291438/
Aronin, L., & Singleton, D. (2012). Affordances theory in multilingualism studies. Studies in
Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2(3), 311.
https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2012.2.3.3

Scontras, G., Fuchs, Z., Polinsky M. (October, 2015). Heritage language and linguistic
theory. Frontiers. Retrieved from
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01545/full