The WHAT and WHY of
Mother Tongue – Based Multilingual Education
(MTB-MLE)
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
The
What
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
What is Multilingual Education
Mother tongue-based multilingual education
(MLE) is education, formal or non - formal, in
which the learner’s mother tongue and
additional languages are used in the
classroom. Learners begin their education in
the language they understand best - their
mother tongue - and develop a strong
foundation in their mother language before
learning additional languages.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Multilingual Education
The purpose of a multilingual
education program is to develop
appropriate cognitive and reasoning
skills enabling children to operate
equally in different languages starting in the mother tongue.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Multilingual Education
o is a structured program of language learning and
cognitive development providing:
 a strong educational foundation in the first
language
 successful bridging to one or more additional
languages
 enabling the use of both/all languages for lifelong learning
o is based in the child’s own known environment
and bridges to the wider world. “Known to
Unknown”
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Multilingual Education
o maintains local language and culture
while providing national/international
language acquisition and instruction
o promotes learners’ integration into the
national society without forcing them
to sacrifice their linguistic and cultural
heritage.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Multilingual Education
o Meaning based education enables students to learn
well because they understand what the teacher is
saying.
o Using the culture the child knows enables
immediate comprehension from which new
concepts can be built – going from the known to the
unknown.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Multilingual Education
o Reading in the mother tongue enables
immediate comprehension
o Once we learn to read we never have to
learn again – “ We only learn to READ
once”
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
The
Why
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
We are Multilingual -
Usec. Dina
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
o One of the goals of effective teaching is to create a
classroom environment that is both familiar to the
learner and also stretches them beyond their previous
experiences.
How can teachers help bridge young learners from the
learning styles of home to those of school?
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
o Children bring knowledge, opinion, perspectives
and questions to the classroom.
o Teachers should allow for learners’ different
understanding of the world, and facilitate active
reflection on those ideas and exploration of new
ideas.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
The most basic of all pedagogical principles is
this:
Understand what the learner already knows
and begin with that. “START FROM WHERE
THE LEARNERS ARE”
David Ausubel, 1968
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
We are Multilingual -
Usec. Dina
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Group Task
■ Complete the table below. In your group, choose one mother tongue in the Philippines. Indicate
the mother tongue you chose in the last column.
Courteous Expressions (Leave-taking, everyday expression and special occasions)
English
Good morning!
Good noon!
Good afternoon!
Good evening!
Excuse me!
May I go out!
Welcome!
Hello! or Hi!
Goodbye!
Happy birthday!
Congratulations!
Spanish
Filipino
Mother Tongue
Group Task
■ Complete the table below. In your group, choose one mother tongue in the Philippines. Indicate
the mother tongue you chose in the last column.
Courteous Expressions (Leave-taking, everyday expression and special occasions)
English
Condolences!
Merry Christmas!
Happy New Year!
Come again!
Take Care!
Have a good day!
Please!
May I!
I apologize!
How are you?
Spanish
Filipino
Mother Tongue
THEORIES AND PRINCIPLES
OF MTB-MLE
Reference:
Teaching and Learning Languages and Multi-literacies: Responding
to the MTB-MLE Challenge
Let’s recall
1.According to your parents/guardians,
when did you start talking?
2.What is your first language?
3.Who do you think influenced you the
most in learning how to talk or
communicate?
Lesson 1
LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY:
SOCIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES OF LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE
■Considered one of the elements of culture
■It is the system of words or signs that a
particular group of people uses to express
thoughts and feelings with each other
■Primary tool used in the communication
process
What are the linguistic elements of
language?
1. Phonology – the sound system of a language
2. Morphology – the study of the structure of
words
3. Syntax – the study of the structure of
sentences
4. Semantics – the study of meaning in language
5. Pragmatics – the appropriate use of language
in different contexts
Why is language
cultured-based?
Language Environment
All languages take place within a particular
environment
Language that is appropriate to one
environment might appear meaningless or
foolish in another
4 Elements of Language
Environment
■People
■Their Purpose
■The Rules Communication by Which They
Achieve their Purpose
■The Actual Talk Used in the Situation
How do we acquire
Language?
Lesson 2
First Language Acquisition
(FLA) and Literacy
Development
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
1. Behaviorist Perspective (B.F Skinner)
Believe that language like any other knowledge,
skills and values can be taught to children via
repetition, imitation and habituation
*Children learn to speak by copying the utterances
heard around them, and by having their responses
strengthened by the repetitions, corrections and other
reactions that adults provide.
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
3 Basic Parts of Audio-lingual Teaching Method
1. Presentation through oral and dialogue form with little
explanation. Errors are immediately corrected, accuracy
emphasized, accurate repetition and memorization of
the dialogue is the goal of this stage
2. Practice through patterned drills to help learners master
the structure of the language and fluency overly
emphasized
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
3 Basic Parts of Audio-lingual Teaching Method
3. Application through the use of the memorized
structures in different contexts
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
2. Constructivist Perspective (J. Piaget and Lev
Vygotsky)
Argue that children are prewired to learn and
acquire language as they go through different
developmental stages
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
Cognitive Constructivism
Stage
Age
Description
Sensorimotor
0-18
months
Knowledge is acquired and structured through sensory
perception and motor activity. Schemes involve action rather
than symbols
Preoperational
2-6
years
Knowledge is acquired and structured through symbols such
as words, but schemes are intuitive rather than logical
Concrete
Operational
7-12
years
Knowledge is acquired and structured symbolically and
logically, but schemes are limited to concrete and present
objects and events
Formal
Operational
12 years Knowledge is acquired and structured symbolically and
and
logically, and hypothetical/deductive (“if then) thinking can be
older
used to generate all the possibilities in particular situation
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
Cognitive Constructivism
As children become sophisticated in their mental
processes, the more susceptible they are in
acquiring and manipulating language to
represent ideas
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
Sociocultural Constructivism
Lev Vygotsky emphasized the importance of private
speech, children talking to themselves for turning
shared knowledge into personal knowledge
Vygotsky’s theory implies that cognitive development
and the ability to use thought to control one’s own
actions require first a mastery of cultural
communication systems and then learning to use
these systems to regulate one’s thought processes
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
Sociocultural Constructivism
He explained that every individual has zone of
proximal development (ZPD) – the gap between
actually ability, something that they can do on
their own and potential ability, something that
they can do with help and supervision (scaffold)
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
The Critical Period (CP) Hypothesis
Eric Lenneberg (1921-75) was a linguist and a
neurologist who pioneered on innateness argued
that the development of language in children
can best be understood in the context of
developmental biology that critical period in
human maturation existed especially on
language acquisition
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
The Critical Period (CP) Hypothesis
Lenneberg believed that the development of
language was said to be the result of brain
maturation
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
Innateness (Noam Chomsky)
Chomsky argued that children are endowed with
the capacity to acquire a language as they are
continuously exposed to adult speech
INPUT
Primary
Linguistic Data
(Adult Speech)
LAD or Universal Grammar
General
language
learning
principles
Grammatical
Knowledge
OUTPUT
Child’s Speech
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
Interactionists’ Perspective
 Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (SLT) explains
that children learn from each other and from others
through observation, imitation and modeling
 This theory explains that children imitate the words and
language patterns they hear by watching and listening to
the models, caregivers and family members in their life
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
4 Phases Bandura’s Analysis of Observational Learning
1. Attention Phase – Paying attention to the model
This phase actually explains why teenagers are hooked
up with pop culture
2. Retention Phase – Once teachers and adult have learner’s
attention, it is time to model the behavior they want students to
replicate and then give learners a chance to practice or
rehearse
Different Theories that Influence
Language Acquisition
4 Phases Bandura’s Analysis of Observational Learning
3. Reproduction – learners attempt to replicate the model’s
behavior
In the classroom, this takes the form of an assessment of
learners’ learning
4. Motivation Phase – Children will imitate a model
because they believe that doing so will increase their own
chances to be reinforced
GROUP TASK
■ Critique the MTB-MLE Curriculum Framework in
the Philippines
■ Discuss what needs to be improved (if any) and
propose an alternative to improve the
framework.
■ Then prepare an extemporaneous talk regarding
your analysis of the MTB-MLE curriculum in the
Philippines