PEDAGOGICAL COMPETENCIES IN TEACHING MTB

LESSON 5

Pedagogical Competencies in Teaching Mother Tongue

The pedagogical competencies emphasized in this module are as follows:
 your ability to understand deeper the target language and the culture in which the
language is situated;
 your ability to design and execute instructional plans in teaching mother tongue;
and
 your ability to create assessments to ensure that learning is genuinely taking
place.

CULTURE
Understanding the Local Culture
Doige (2003) commented that students academic achievement improves more when the
education is culturally relevant and responsive. For example, in a 2011 study, pupils from
an ethnic cultural group did not learn as fast when compared to their mainstream
counterparts. This gap was attributed to the language barrier between students and
teachers. It was also caused by differences in values towards education
(Schmeichel, 2011).

How do you become a good teacher to these students?

The answer is that there is no single way of being a good teacher since approaches and
relevant topics change in different cultures, language, race, ethnicity, class, and gender
(Taylor &Sobel, 2011).

Definitions of Culturally-Responsive Education

 To use the experiences and frames of reference based on the diverse culture of the
students (Gay, 2010a)
 An approach to education where the teacher integrates elements of the students'
lifestyles and daily experiences in the instruction and the curriculum (Taylor &
Sobel, 2011)
 A type of pedagogy where teachers are competent in cross-cultural and multicultural
setting (Diller & Moule, 2005).
 Recognizes the uniqueness of the majority and the minority in the body of students
(Cartledge, Gardner, & Ford, 2009... as cited in Taylor & Sobel, 2011).

Culture is composed of many elements. Some of these are values, language

(Salvatore, 2012), symbols, objects (Watts, 1981), groups, and norms (Hebdige, 2012).

These elements may be classified into three:

(1) Sense-making,
(2) Artifacts,
(3) Groups.
Elements of Culture
Elements of Culture Key Questions
Sense-making – the multiple What values are prominent in the
representation of meaning a community?
given object, person or event.
Different meanings to a certain object. What specific words or phrases do
This may depend on their values and they always use? What do they
their language. mean by it?
Artifacts – is defined as anything What objects does the community
belonging to a group of people use or own?
that provides information about What are their significance?
said group’s culture. It may include
symbols, traditional objects What symbols or emblems were used
found in archeological sites, or more by the community? Why?
modern objects like cellphones,
televisions, laptops, etc.
Groups – different cultures usually What significant groups can be found
have sub-groups inside in the community? What are the
which are called subcultures. These organizations?
are groups that have their own norms
and values that sometimes retain a What are the expected pattern of
few of the parent culture’s behavior or belief in these groups?
general principles.
5.2 Knowing the Mother Tongue
Mother Tongue

Linguistic interdependence hypothesis

This mentions that language proficiency skills, like speaking, listening, reading, and
writing developed using one language, may also transfer to higher language proficiency
skills in another language. This means that the speaking, listening, reading, and writing
skills developed using mother tongue may also transfer to the student's secondary
language when he/she learns the new language (Paia, Cummins, Nocus, Salaun, &
Vernaudon,2015).

What is Article 13.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
People?
Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future
generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and
literature's, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and
persons.

What is Article 14 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples?
Article 14 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their
educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a
manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and

Linguistic Minorities
Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (hereinafter
referred to as persons belonging to minorities) have the right to enjoy their own culture, to
profess and practise their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in
public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination.

RA 10157: Kindergarten Education Act

 The State shall hereby adopt the mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-
MLE) method. The mother tongue of the learner shall be the primary medium of instruction
for teaching and learning in the kindergarten level.

What is RA 10533 Enhanced basic education Act of 2013 Section 4 and Section 5f?
“An Act Enhancing the Philippine Basic Education System by Strengthening Its
Curriculum and Increasing the Number of Years for Basic Education, Appropriating Funds
Therefor and for Other Purposes,” otherwise known as the “Enhanced Basic Education Act
of 2013.”

What is RA 10533 Enhanced basic education Act of 2013 Section 4 and Section 5f?
“An Act Enhancing the Philippine Basic Education System by Strengthening Its
Curriculum and Increasing the Number of Years for Basic Education,
Appropriating Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes,” otherwise known as the
“Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013.”

Nelson Mandela, a highly influential South African political leader, was once quoted saying,
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk
to him in his language, that goes to his heart."

The mother tongue, or any language, may be studied and understood through different
aspects. It may be examined using the five knowledge of the language which are:
(1) Phonology,
(2) Morphology,
(3) Syntax,
(4) Semantics
. (5) Pragmatics.

Phonology is defined as the study of patterns in speech sound. It consists of

knowing about the sounds of a language and of describing the said sound (Brentari,
Fenlon, & Cormier, 2018).
Phonemes distinctive units of sound within a language.
 Allophones -the different ways to pronounce a single phoneme. For instance, in the
word "top", the “t“ is usually pronounced as a "th" (Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams, 2018).
Morphology is defined as the rules of language that govern word formation.

Morpheme the smallest unit of a word that has information about the word's meaning and
purpose. For example, in the word "farmer, there are two morphemes which are "farm" and
"-er. The former indicates an area of land used for growing crops while the latter indicates a
person who works in the said area of land.
Root word -a term that form the basis of another word. These are usually nouns, verbs,
adjectives, or adverbs.
Affixes morphemes placed either at the beginning, middle, or end of a root word to come
up with a new meaning
Compound words - a combination of two root words to form a new meaning (O'Grady,
Archibald,
2016)
Syntax is defined as the set of statutes and principles that govern sentence
structure and word order in a language (Chomsky, & Lightfoo).

What is the common order of subject, verb, and object or predicate in the language
being studied?
Constituents - the sub-units in a sentence that provide a complete thought.
Synctactic category-a family of expressions that can be substituted for one another
without losing proper grammar. For example, there are four synctactic categories in the
sentence "The bird is flying above the field." These are: "the field", "above", "is flying," and
"The bird."
Semantics is defined as the study of linguistic
meanings.
Anomaly- a situation when specific words or phrases cannot be combined to make
sense. For instance, the phrase "colorless green" does not make sense since green is a
color and "colorless" means "without color" (Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams, 2018).
Metaphor - a figure of speech where one object
or idea is used to refer to another object or idea for rhetorical purposes (Merriam-Webster
dictionary n. d.)
 Idioms- expressions established by societal norms to have meaning aside from what
it literally indicates (Tom, 1992).
Pragmatics is defined as the study of unseen or hidden meanings in different
languages apart from its content. This meaning is provided by the context and a pre-
existing knowledge of the perceiver about the utterance,

Physical context- the actual location, apart of the utterance, that provides the
context.
Linguistic context-the context provided by the utterance itself.
Deixis-words that cannot be identified without the context. Examples of these words
are here, there, him, her, yesterday, and tomorrow.
References-the act of which the speaker specifies an orientation or a position for the
deixis.
Inference - the perceiver's use of additional
information not provided in the utterance in order
to understand the message.
Anaphora -another term, for instance a pronoun,
used to identify an object that is being referred to
for the second time (Yule, 2016).