Mother Tongue Education (MTE) in the Philippines seeks to educate learners from kindergarten to 3rd grade using their mother tongues. However, in Linguistically Diverse Contexts (LDCs) where multiple mother tongues are spoken, a lingua franca is nominated as the alternative MOI. Against this backdrop, our study explores the language attitudes of…

The study aimed to investigate the impact of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) on students' writing skills in their first language (L1), Tagalog, and explore whether their proficiency in L1 contributes to their second language (L2) writing. This study employed a conceptual framework based on language acquisition and bilingual…

To address the challenges of teaching and learning among multilingual elementary students, the Philippines, a multilingual country with over 180 languages, implemented the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Studies on the use of mother tongue have reported positive results among students who share a common language. However, in…

This paper investigates the degree of bilingualism and its corresponding effects on the metalinguistic skill of phonological awareness among Grade I ESL learners. It compares full and partial bilinguals' performance in the three tests: initial phoneme detection, final phoneme detection, and deletion tasks. Forty students aged 6-7 carried out…

This action research primarily aims to remediate the low level of basic writing skills (writing in cursive, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and paragraphing) of Grade 7 learners in Filipino class/subject in a government high school. The researcher conducted: (1) assessment of learners' writing competency through pre and post-tests; (2)…

This collaborative action research project in Alberta, Canada, explored how dual-language books (DLBs) can foster literacy instruction and learner engagement through language awareness. Canada's changing demographics have resulted in mother tongue diversity and many urban schools identifying at least 25% of students as being English language…

Recent studies have proposed developments to the Simple View of Reading to reflect reading development across age groups and differences among learner profiles and account for additional factors that explain reading comprehension performance beyond word recognition and language comprehension. One of these proposals is the inclusion of cognitive…

This article investigates the word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and five- and seven-year-old children. The participants were asked to complete sentences to describe pictures depicting actions between two animate entities. Adults preferred agent-initial constructions in the patient voice but not in the agent voice, while the…

This paper shall describe the bridging strategies used by Grades 3 and 4 English teachers from schools in two regions in the Philippines to help their multilingual students transition from using the mother tongue as medium of instruction in the different subject areas to using English in the English classroom. Data were obtained through…

Multilingual learners (MLs) are students whose primary language is not English and are eligible for English language development services through the Transitional Bilingual Instruction Program (TBIP). Eligible MLs receive TBIP services until they become proficient in English. During the 2022-23 school year, 149,357 students were identified as…

In 2009 the Philippines introduced a mother tongue-based multilingual education language policy requiring the "mother tongue" as the language of instruction (LOI) in kindergarten through grade 3. Using teacher classroom language data collected from four LOI groups in 2019, we compared the frequency of teachers' use of the target LOI in…

Significant consequences are results of mere decision on determining the language of instruction specifically in the early years of education. It means that rightful language choice leads to educational success. Contrariwise, an inappropriate selection of a language proves to be detrimental in the taking place of learning. With the recent language…

With the present implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in the Philippines, this study investigated the language practices of teachers and learners (collectively 'participants') in the teaching and learning of English as a second language (ESL) in two Third Grade classrooms in a multilingual city in the Philippines.…

This quantitative investigation involved 1,054 pre-service teacher respondents with mean age = 20.21 (SD=3.124). This cross-sectional study gathered data through the creation of four research tools validated and pilot tested. Moreover, three of the research tools (AChavQ, AFilQ, AEngQ) were determined to be of 'excellent' reliability, while one is…

English learners (ELs) are students whose primary language is not English and are eligible for English language development services through the Transitional Bilingual Instruction Program (TBIP). Washington state's TBIP has existed since the passage of Senate Bill 2149 in 1979, and is codified in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) Chapter…