Effectiveness of Mother Tongue Language in Improving

the Learning Competency of Students

Introduction

The Philippines is an archipelago in the Pacific with rich linguistic and cultural
diversity. According to Lewis, Simons, & Fennig 2013, the linguistic and cultural diversity
in the Philippines brings much complexity to the issue of language policy in education.
With more than 7000 islands and 181 distinct languages, the Philippines offer a
challenging environment for implementing a language policy that can serve the whole
country. Consequently, language policies for Philippines schools have fluctuated greatly
over the last century with a different policy for nearly every generation. Until recently, the
1974 and 1987 Bilingual Education Policies determined the language of instruction in
schools to be Filipino and English. This is despite the fact that about 80% of the
population does not speak either of these as a mother tongue language.
In 2009, the Department of Education (DepEd) challenged the Bilingual
Education Policy by issuing an order that called for institutionalization of mother tonguebased multilingual education (MTB-MLE). This order requires use of the learnersfirst
language as the medium of instruction for all subject areas in pre-kindergarten through
grade three with Filipino and English being taught as separate subjects (Philippines
Department of Education, 2009). Another order was issued in 2012 that offered more
specific guidelines for MTB-MLE and embedded the reform in the newly adopted K to
12 Basic Education Program (Philippines Department of Education, 2012).