Chapter 1 THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING Background of the Study There are many factors involved in delivering quality basic education. Linguistic competence is the key factor for a better understanding in communication. But the introduction of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) which mother tongue is used as a medium of instruction brings challenge to the linguistic competence particularly in oral communication competence. In some South Asian countries, MT-based MLE includes four languages—the students’ mother tongue or first language, a regional language, the national language and an international language (Kathmandu, 2007). Among these four languages, first and second language are used as a communication medium in educating students. However, second language is still the most common medium of communication in terms of profession. Many professionals are using the second language in providing paper works, proposals to different countries and also as a communication tool in communicating diverse individuals. Western African countries experienced developments and difficulties of having mother tongue used in multi-lingual society (Bangbose, 2005). There are developments and difficulties happened not just in Western Africa but also to some parts of the world. Development in terms of speaking using second language can help to communicate other nations to have new innovations and better relationship. Difficulties happened because most of the individuals who usually speak the first language cannot adapt easily the second one. They still need time to practice and have confident in using second language. In Guatemala, they initiated mother tongue-based schooling to remedy the situation where only about 40 percent of its rural Maya language-speaking population enrolled in school and half of them dropped out by the end of the first grade (Dutcher,1995). This 40 percent of students enrolled are those who have the capabilities of using second language as their communication medium in school while half of them dropped out because their language has no place inside the classroom. The culture of the classroom, the textbooks, and the approach of the teachers are on its dominant society wherein they uses second language as a medium. By initiating mother tongue based education, it helps to lessen the issues lies in the institution and helps the learners to express their ideas by using their own language. Nationally, Young (2010) stated that many Filipino people prefer to use English as their communication tool. However, many Filipino children started their education in a language that they do not understand as well as their first language or also known as Mother Tongue. Education starts at home. Parents have responsibilities in educating their child in many ways. First language must be taught at home. Do not forget the language that will recognize of who you are. A conversation which involves the parents and the child using the first language will create a great impact to the learning of the child. By making conversations using first language daily can help to retain in child’s mind the importance of communication involving the mother tongue language. Kaplan and Baldauf (1998) depict the Philippines as “linguistically heterogeneous with no absolute majority speakers of any given indigenous language.” Our nation is comprises of various cultures molded in different kind of language. These languages were already used during the time of our ancestors such as chavacano in Zamboanga; bisaya in Cebu, Davao and in some parts of Mindanao. But in order to become one, in terms of communication, most of us used tagalog as a communication medium to other people in the society. Language learning is a continuous process. The focus must be the learners’ need, level, background and the teachers’ knowledge in teaching the language. Teachers must know what language will suit to the learners’ need. Therefore, it is important to consider using appropriate language in a class. Statement of the Problem The aim of this study is to determine the effect of the implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education on the oral competence among the grade one pupils of the University of Mindanao. Specifically, it sought to answer the following questions: 1. What is the extent of implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in Grade 3 in terms of: 1.1 subject matter, and 1.2 medium of instruction. 2. What is the level of Oral Competence of Grade 3 pupils in the Department of Education schools in Davao City in terms of: 1.1 fluency, 1.2 pronunciation, 1.3 grammar awareness, and 1.4 phonological awareness. 3. Is there significant relationship between the factors affecting the success of mother tongue-based multilingual education and the oral competence of Grade 3? Hypothesis of the Study The study will test the hypothesis that the factors affecting the success of Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education in Oral competence does not affect the Oral Competence of Grade 3 pupils in the Department of Education schools in Davao City. Review on Related Literature To provide a background and framework of the research, selected literatures related to the study are presented in this section. The review includes concepts and views discussing the subject of the research. Mother Tongue One of the changes in Basic Education Curriculum brought about by the new K-12 program is the introduction of Mother Tongue- Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) specifically in Kindergarten, Grades 1, 2 and 3 to support the goal of “ Every Child- A- Reader and A –Writer” by Grade 1.” Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) refers to “firstlanguage-first” education that is schooling begins with the mother tongue and transitions to additional languages particularly Filipino and English. It is meant to address the high functional illiteracy of Filipinos where language plays a significant factor. It encourages active participation by children in the learning process because they understand what is being discussed and what is being asked of them. They can immediately use their mother tongue to construct and explain their world, articulate their thoughts and add new concepts to what they already know. Throughout much of the history of research into second language acquisition (SLA), the role of learners’ first language (L1) has been a hotly debated issue. Prodromou (2000) refers to the mother tongue as a ‘skeleton in the closet’, while Gabrielatos (2001) calls it a ‘bone of contention’. Such views are but a mere reflection of the different methodological shifts in English Language Teaching, which have brought about new and different outlooks on the role of the mother tongue. Intuitively, a good number of teachers feel, partly based on their own experiences as learners of a second language, that the mother tongue has an active and beneficial role to play in instructed second language acquisition/learning. In the literature, an increasing number of teacherresearchers stress the growing methodological need in TEFL/TESOL for a principled, systematic and judicious way of using the mother tongue in the classroom. And yet, for some of us, there seems to be a generalized feeling of guilt that we are acting counter to the principles of good teaching when we use the learners’ mother tongue as a tool to facilitate learning. Moreover, the choice of the language is a recurrent challenge in the development of quality education. Speakers of mother tongues which are not the same as the national language, are often at a considerable disadvantage in the educational system (UNESCO, 2003). Throughout the world and in developing countries no one can deny the spread and success of English language. For such purpose everyone is craving for the means to get proper command over this language and to gain the ability to use it properly just like its fluent native speakers. In connection with that, Baker & Westrup (2003) says that there is a need for people who speak English well not only throughout the world but also in the developing countries as well. Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Mother instruction in early childhood and primary education has been promoted and encouraged by UNESCO since 1953. But monolingualism in official or dominant languages still widely used and preferred around the world (Arnold, Bartlett, Gowani, & Merali, 2006; Wolff & Ekkehard, 2000). As what the Strong Foundations: Early Childhood Care and Education‘, UNESCO (2007a) reports the overlooked advantages of multilingual education in the early years. According to Konsen (2005), when children have the chance and opportunities to learn in their mother tongue, most likely they succeed in school and their parents will more likely to communicate with the teachers and participate in their children learnings (Benson, 2002). Also, mother tonguebased multilingual education benefits the disadvantaged groups, especially those children from rural area (Hovens, 2002), and girls who tend to have less exposure to an official language, have found out to stay in school longer, achieve better when they are taught in their mother tongue (UNSECO Bangkok, 2005). Children who are enrolled in multilingual education tend to develop better thinking skills compared to those are not (e.g., Bialystok, 2001; Cummins, 2000; King & Mackey, 2007). There are some educators who argue that only those countries where the student’s first language is the language used in instruction will more likely to achieve the goals of Education for All (Ball, 2010). Research also proposed that engaging marginalized children in school though mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) will be a successful model (Benson & Kosonen, 2013; Yiakoumetti, 2012). According to the research, young children have unique style that matches their development. Thus, their environmental education needs to be designed and create matching their needs, interests and learning styles that will help them eventually with effective learning outcome (White & Stoecklin, 2008). This findings call for the mother tongue instruction (Khosa, 2012) which will help learners to learn through the language they are most familiar. According to Senadeera (2010), when you encourage young children to learn through their mother tongue it will help them develop confidence, self-esteem and their unique identity within a multicultural society. When children are forced to learn and acquire unknown language in an unknown cultural pattern at a young age, they are likely to experience anxiety causing them to react differently to such experiences (Menhyuk & Brisk, 2005). The Republic of the Philippines is home of more than 180 individual languages (Lewis, 2013), but most of the people speak only three or more languages. Philippines is a diverse country especially in terms of the languages. Philippines is the only country in the Southeast Asia who implement the mother tongue instruction in the primary years of the children. The Filipino government through Department of Education (DepEd), create an order known as DepEd Order 74 Institutionalizing Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (2009). It is an order of national implementation of the policy into public schools began in 2012-13. The DepEd introduced twelve major languages; Tagalog, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Iloko, Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Tausug, Maguindanaoan, Maranao, and Chabacano. Currently MTB-MLE is being implemented into two areas; first as a subject area and second as medium of instruction (Luistro, 2013). Mother tongue as a Learning/Subject Area Learning concerns whether first language learning is enhanced by the use of the students’ mother tongue. Naturalness relates to whether students prefer the use of their mother tongue rather than the first language regarding certain topics. The language areas for which teachers would prefer to use the Mother Tongue should also be considered. Previous studies indicates that teachers use the Mother Tongue in EFL classrooms to explain the new vocabulary and grammatical structures, organize tasks and give instructions (Cook, 2001), and maintain discipline in class and create rapport with individual students. As to Getu (2006), apart from the medium of instruction we ought to consider the teaching of specific language as subject in the curriculum and the effect they have in the cultural awareness and psychological sense of the subject. Therefore, in educational curriculum, where mother tongue is a medium, the teaching of other language as it broadens the students’ awareness reading cultural values. Forcing students to speak English in the classroom may prevent them from participating in the conversation. It is essential that students volunteer to speak. Zahide (2013) indicated that the use of L1 removes the barriers on language and it can be useful tool to facilitate learning. Also, it helps to motivate the students to participate the group and pair work activities and discussions. Children are encouraged to describe, explain, analyze, ask questions, exchange ideas – to talk rather than sit passively while the teachers talks at them. The curriculum for mother tongue teaching for language minorities is structured into four main subject areas, with competence aims formulated for each area. Except for the main subject area Language and culture, the main subject areas Listening and speaking, Reading and writing (DedEp 2013) The main subject areas complement each other and must be viewed in relation to one another (DepEd Sec. Luistro,2014). Pupils who follow this curriculum may be at different levels when the teaching begins, and it may take some longer than others to reach the competence aims, depending on their previous knowledge of their mother tongue. This subject is a common core subject for all the upper secondary education programmes. Learning in this subject shall therefore be made as relevant as possible for pupils by adapting each subject to its education programme as much as possible.(UNESCO, 2012) Listening and speaking The main subject area Listening and speaking concerns oral communication in one’s mother tongue – that is, using the language orally in a variety of situations and when working with different subjects (DepEd, 2013). A key aspect of this main subject area is the development of concepts and vocabulary. Reading and writing The main subject area Reading and writing concerns developing reading and writing skills. It also covers text comprehension and text production within a variety of genres. Working with literary, technical and composite texts in one’s mother tongue is also included in this main subject area. Key elements are promoting the love of reading and experience in reading literary texts(UNESCO, 20012). Language learning The main subject area Language learning includes knowledge about one’s mother tongue and insight into one’s own language learning. The main subject area is about knowing the language as a system and being able to choose strategies and work methods that are appropriate for learning the language( CHED, 2010). A comparative perspective of one’s mother tongue and Norwegian is also an integral part of this main subject area. Language and culture The main subject area Language and culture is about looking at language and literature from a historical and international perspective. Also included is an awareness of appropriate language use in a variety of social contexts Medium of Instruction “It is increasingly obvious that the language of instruction at the beginning of one’s education at such a crucial moment for future learning should be the mother tongue” (UNESCO, 2001). From these statement made by UNESCO that pertain to mother tongue-based multilingual education, first language or mother tongue of the young children must be used to attain the goal which is to entail meaningful and best learning to the children. Most of the countries on Southeast Asia do not use first language (mother tongue) as a medium of instruction. Young children enters primary school with the need to learn through using the second language which is not familiar to them and obviously new. This set up a challenging task to the children’s learning. According to Baker (2001), if children are forced to learn in a second language they are not familiar with, it will result to poor mastery of cognitive task required in a language. From a recent World Bank Note (Bender et al, 2005) says that using the target language or second language and not the mother tongue is not a productive practices that will affect the learnings of the young children. Those students whose first language is not used as a language of instruction generally have lower academic achievements. Children are not engaged in meaningful learning. Hornberger and Chick (2001) illustrate the teacher-student interaction in South African and Peruvian submersion education settings, where the class discussion is limited and is like of parroting of expected answer yes/no answers. Using English as the medium of instruction in such an early learning stage makes learners meet a barrier in classroom. Hallberg (2010) says that a language barrier is a kind of psychological barrier that affects the communication being put across. According to the South African Department of Education (2005), language barriers are caused by forcing learners to communicate and learn using a language they are not yet familiar and they do not use in their home are not likely to learn effectively. This is supported by Owen-Smith (2010) who claimed that those children who cannot use their first language or the language they use in their home will not succeed in learning effectively. Therefore, until young children cannot developed their first language and be competent enough, they will have difficulties in cognitive and in their second language acquisition (Thomas & Collier, 2004). The World Bank estimate that almost half of the world’s out-of-school children do not have the chance to learn using their first language or the language they used at home (Bender, 2005). Many children speak their first language that is different from the medium of instruction in education program. Research confirms that children lean best using mother tongue children familiar with (Ball, 2010). Those students who enter school with less exposure to the majority language use as medium of instruction attain only few verbal skills of the language (Dekker & Young, 2005). As a result, students’ content knowledge and literacy skills will suffer. This situation call for the change in language of instruction. Change in medium of instruction to mother tongue that is familiar to the children will bring a lot of benefits to the young children. As what Benson (2008) said that using mother tongue of the children as a medium of instruction will lead us closer reaching Education for All goals. Medium of instruction pertains to the language use by the teacher in teaching. It might be teaching the language or even the content of the subject itself through using the target language. In this case, medium of instruction that must be used inside the classroom as we frame it in the mother tonguebased multilingual education, is the mother tongue or first language of the children. Thus, it is called mother tongue instruction which the first language or mother tongue use as a medium of instruction in the classroom setting. Now let us discuss how does mother tongue-based multilingual education affects the oral competence of the young children in grade 3. Baker (2003) stressed that MTB-MLE can barely affect to the student oral competence. Therefore he characterized the following: Fluency, Pronunciation, Grammatical awareness, and Phonological awareness. Fluency Fluency refers to the smoothness or flow with sounds, syllables, words, and phrases joined together when speaking quickly. Reading fluency, on the other hand, is defined as smooth effortless reading, precise and speedy reading, and steady and natural oral production of written texts (Oakly, 2005; Rasinski, 1989; Welsch; 2006). In order for the students to develop fluency in reading, teachers must employ and use interactive activities (Oakley, 2005; Welsch, 2006). According to Oakley (2005), reading fluency is made up of many components: speed, accuracy, automaticity, appropriate phrasing, and expressiveness are all characteristics of fluent reading. Fluency is considered as the foundation of proficient reading (Hiebert & Fisher, 2005). Since fluency is considered as one of the important component in reading, it is also included in the five literacy areas which one whole section is devoted to fluency (Cowen, 2003). Additionally, the link between fluency and comprehension is another reason to consider teaching fluency lessons, especially fluency explicit lessons (Oakley, 2005). Even if fluency is now accepted and known as an important aspect of reading, we cannot deny the fact that it is not being put into consideration in reading instruction. But instructors will be able to give feedback and guidance in order to help students progress in a critical area by monitoring them using informal assessments of fluency and word recognition (Cowen, 2003). Through employing variety of classroom fluency strategies, teachers will be able to help everyone develop their fluency. However, researchers argue that the definition stated above is incomplete without considering the role of comprehension (Oakley, 2005; Stahl & Heubach, 2005). One of the goals of fluency oriented reading instructions includes comprehension: “Lessons will be comprehension oriented, even when smooth and fluent oral reading is being emphasized” (Stahl & Heubach, 2005). Thus, it is needed for activities designed to develop fluency to result in improved comprehension (Oakley, 2005). Comprehension also improves word recognition, which is another important aspect of fluency (Stahl & Heubach, 2005). Activities and strategies are all around the place that will help and develop both oral and non-oral reading fluency. The first step in designing a fluency lesson is to choose a piece of literature that is appropriate in the level of readability (Hiebert & Fisher, 2005; Oakley, 2005; Rasinski, 1989; Stahl & Heubach, 2005; Welsch, 2006). Welsch (2006) suggest rhythmic, predictable, and repetitious literature has been found to aid in fluency. Lessons on concepts and vocabulary fits well with the challenging texts, while the easier texts that can be read with high accuracy rate of 90&-95% or more are ideal for enhancing fluency (Oakley, 2005; Welsch, 2006). This will make it hard in looking for a good literature since there are a lot of easy texts that might be too boring to read. Thus, it is much better to allow your students to determine their own readability level and choose their desired texts (Oakley, 2005). In addition, Kopponen and Riggenbach (2000) define fluency as a performance based phenomenon which is related to the flow, continuity, automaticity or smoothness of the speech. DimitraHartas (2005,) in his book Language and Communication Difficulties emphasized upon children’s need to acquire both linguistic and social knowledge in order to become effective communicators. People can easily make their mother tongue fluent. But Linguists have not come to an arrangement mother tongue language fluency. Faerch et.al (2000) thought that fluency is a relative concept. In SL learning it often refers to express their thoughts easily automatically. Sajavaraa (2001) suggested that according to communicative acceptability of language behavior. At this aspect, they emphasize communicative environment. Pronunciation Pronunciation is the way or act which a word or a language is spoken, or the manner of utterances of words. Lund (2003) point out that pronunciation is the only aspect of language that calls for a close interaction between the cognitive and physiological processes. We cannot deny the fact that when a person is good in pronunciation, people will easily understand him or her unlike when she or he is poor in pronunciation there will be a difficulty in understanding what she or he is trying to say. We might use simple words and grammar structures in order for us to be easily understood by those people around us but we cannot compromise the pronunciation. Vitanova & Miller (2002) found out that students usually link the mastery of pronunciation with improved communicative abilities, reflected on the value of learning both segmentals and suprasegmentals, and the importance of pronunciation in achieving confidence in communication. According to Gelvanovsky (2002), pronunciation plays an important role in social value, which means that it is very important in intelligence, professional competence, persuasiveness, diligence, and social privilege. Through pronunciation we can identify the speaker’s geographical and social origin. As what Norton & Tohey (2001) reported that social factors may influence children’s second language acquisition. But, it has not been examined the specific effects of social identify on language learners’ second language pronunciation. Pronunciation instruction is a prominent factor in foreign language teaching. Since sounds play an important role in communication, foreign language teachers must attribute proper importance to teaching pronunciation in their classes. In Mexico, pronunciation is described as “the Cinderella of language teaching”; meaning that there is a low level of emphasis on this very important language skill (Dalton, 2002). It is evident that communication is a mutual relationship between the speaker and the hearer. This means that one must comprehend what he/she hears in the target language and must produce the sounds of the language he/she is trying to learn accurately. Unless he has sufficient knowledge of the sound patterns of the target language, he can neither encode a message to anybody nor decode the message sent by another person by learning the sounds of the target language within his mother tongue. Therefore, pronunciation instruction is of great importance for successful oral communication to take place since it is an important ingredient of the communicative competence (Hismanoglu, 2006). Pronunciation is a set of habits of producing sounds. The habit of producing a sound is acquired by repeating it over and over again and by being corrected when it is pronounced wrongly. From foregoing so far, the importance of mother-tongue in the learning of English cannot be overemphasized. Language is said to be universal. Errors may occur due the fact that some of the English sounds are not found in their mother-tongue. It has rightly been observed that in the first language learning, the learner is highly motivated and is surrounded by a conductive linguistics environment, the kind that the second language lacks. This implies that though language learning is generally difficult, second language learning has greater problems which results in the greater number of errors in performance of second language users (Vitanova, G., & Miller, A. (2002). The learner begins the learning task of learning a second language from point zero (or close to it) and, through the steady accumulation of the mastered entities of the target language, eventually amasses them in quantities sufficient to constitute a particular level of proficiency. According to Richards and Rodgers (2006), effective communication mostly rely on comprehensible pronunciation or being intelligible. Intelligibility is a notion that has become central to the teaching of pronunciation (Field, 2005). Field defines intelligibility as the “extent to which the acoustic-phonetic content of the message is recognizable by the listener”. Derwing and Munro (2005) define intelligibility as the listener’s perception of how different a speaker’s accent is from that of the first language community. Derwing and Rossiter (2003) focused on how to attain intelligibility through explicit pronunciation instruction. Grammatical Awareness The concise and structure of the sentence is one of the factors in oral communication. In connection with, Sams (2003) says that grammar defines the way language forms are assigned their meaning. He believes that communication cannot happen within grammatical knowledge. On the other hand, Ferrer (2002) stresses that even within the framework of CLT grammar had its place and in the absence of structure or grammar communication cannot take place. What Revlyn Doman (2005) recommends is that grammar is used as an instrument to build communicative abilities and to stress skills that are required for authentic communication to occur. Grammar should be used as the basic foundation for building fluency (Doman, 2005). Each of them focuses on a different part of explicit knowledge of grammar and grammatical terminology. The first is related to recognition of grammatical categories such as preposition, noun and verb. The second is related to production of appropriate meta-linguistic terms containing the ability to provide grammatical terms of a given word / phrase. The third is concerned with identification and creation of error involving the ability to identify and correct faulty sentences or parts of sentences. The final one is related to explanation of grammatical rules which deals with the ability to explain grammatical rules which have been broken (Shuib, 2009). It is very important that English teachers must have grammatical awareness. Denham and Lobeck (2002), states that english education textbooks ask those teachers to be aware of certain grammatical fundamentals in order to help learners identify patterns of errors. Andrews (2005) argue that teachers must have rich knowledge of grammatical constructions for them to be able to help young writers (Shuib, 2009). Careful consideration of the subcomponents of the language system; phonology, the lexicon, grammar, and pragmatics (New combo, et. Al., 2005), leads to the clear prediction that these components will all impact on the production of written texts and could do so at different development phases. Van Pattern (2003) stated that the term developmental stages refers to the way in which one single aspect of language is acquired over time. A learner who educate himself every minute of a day will make him more productive. Thus, the development of a child occur. Many students are still suffering at a low level knowledge. Limitations with oral vocabulary (Mackie et. al 2007) and oral narrative performance (Cragg & Nation, 2006) are related to poor written text production. Phonological Awareness Phonological processing skill is strongly related to reading performance in monolingual English speakers. Additional variance in word reading skill in English is explained by orthographic processing skill. Although English is the most widely studied language in terms of predictors of reading, investigators studying other alphabetic language have found that phonological awareness influences reading ability in individuals learning to read in their first language (Gottardo, Yan, Siegel & Wade-Woolley, 2001). Phonological awareness is the ability to reflect on and manipulate the structure of an utterance as distinct from its meaning. A learner’s language ability needs to be developed to a level where the learner is able think and reflect on the structure of the words syllables and sounds, thus leading to the development of the meta-linguistic skills of the phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is a component of meta-linguistics, which develops due to the higher cognitive level of language use (Goldsworthy, 2000). The knowledge that a word consists of a smaller leads the learner to understand that they can divide them into sounds, syllables, and syllabic constituents. Furthermore, the learner becomes aware that these constituents can be manipulated (Goldsworthy, 2000). Phonological awareness is considered the strongest oral language predictor for reading success and includes the understanding of combining the smallest units of sound or phonemes. For instance, children learn the /m/ is the first spoken sound they hear in monkey long before they understand that the sound is represented by the printed letter /m/. Although children are not typically aware of their knowledge of these rules, their ability to understand and articulate words in their native language is an accurate representation of their understanding. Also, it is a broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes, can clap out the number of syllables in a word, and can recognize words with the same initial sounds like 'money' and 'mother.' According to Gillon (2004)phonological awareness consists of skills that typically develop gradually and sequentially through the late preschool period. They are developed with direct training and exposure. The conscious sensitivity to the sound structure of a language. It includes the ability to auditorily distinguish parts of speech, such as syllables and phonemes. The ability to blend and segment phonemes is critical to the development of decoding and spelling skills. Phonological awareness is an important and reliable predictor of later reading ability and has been, therefore, the focus of much research. Theoretical and Conceptual Framework This study is anchored with the hypothesis of threshold proposed by Skutnabb-Tangas and Toukomaa (1976). This hypothesis try to explain that when children reached a threshold of competence in their first language only they can be successful in learning a second language without comprising the competence between two languages. It further explain that when a child reached the second threshold of competence in both languages it will positively affect intellectual development, a state they called “Additive Bilingualism”. Skutnabb-Tangas and Toukomaa created the threshold level hypothesis based on the research they conducted to the Finnish children who migrated to Sweden and found out that before they had become competent in Finnish showed weaker school performance and lower competence in both Swedish and Finnish. They called this low competence in both languages as semilingualism, saying that if the child’s first language is not fully developed the foundation for the second language lack. Based on Skutnabb-Tangas and Toukomaa (1976) study, Cummins (1984) supported the said findings by formulating an “Interdependence hypothesis” explaining that second language competence depends on the successful development of first language. Cummins differentiate between two kinds of language mastery: interpersonal communication that refers to oral communication skills that used in everyday settings while cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) is achieved when the speaker use language in decontextualized ways such as writing. Figure 1 shows the independent variable which is the Social Learning Theory, under it are the ‘level of actual development’ and ‘level of potential development’. On the other hand is the dependent variable which is the effects to oral competence. Significance of the study This study is beneficial to the following: School Administrators. This study will help them in planning programs that will help pupils become an effective user of native language as well as the second language. Teachers. The result of this study can be a useful guide for them in creating effective instructional activities that will motivate pupils in participating in the class. Pupils. The result of this study can serve as a facilitating tool for them to engage in activities which would help them enhance their language development. Parents / Guardians. The result of this study can be an awareness tool for them to take part in motivating their child. INDEPENDENT VARIABLE IMPLEMENTATION OF MOTHER TONGUE-BASED MULITLINGUAL EDUCATION Subject area Medium DEPENDENT VARIABLE ORAL COMPETENCE Pronunciation Fluency Grammatical Awareness Phonological Awareness of Instruction Figure 1. Conceptual Framework Showing The Variables of the Study Definition of Terms The following terms used in this study are operationally defined to establish a common frame of reference: Mother Tongue – a person’s native language. A language learned from birth. In the context of formal education, the term mother tongue is normally used to refer to the language a child learned first and usually speaks best. In a very high percentage of cases, the ―first language a child learns‖ and the language a child speaks best‖ are one and the same. One can, of course, uncover sociolinguistic settings in which these two are not the same. Such cases often involve complex diglossia due to migration or resettlement. The term ‘mother tongue’, though widely used, may refer to several different situations. Definitions often include the following elements: the language(s) that one has learnt first; the language(s) one identifies with or is identified as a native speaker of by others; the language(s) one knows best and the language(s) one uses most. Mother tongue may also be referred to as primary or first language. The term mother tongue is commonly used in policy statements and in the general discourse on educational issues. Multilingual Education – prototypically, the term multilingual education refers to classroom or school-wide instructional strategies in which multiple languages are used for instructional purposes. There is a plethora of such strategies and continuing controversy as to which is to be preferred and under what circumstances. When this term or model of education is used with reference to educational models in developing countries, it almost always refers to a model in which initial instruction begins in children‘s mother tongue with accompanying preparation to learn a second language which will serve as a language of instruction in later years of school after sufficient mastery has been developed. Multilingual education refers to the use of two or more languages as mediums of instruction. Mother tongue-based instruction - in mother tongue-based instruction, the medium of instruction is the child‘s mother tongue, or first language. Basing instruction in a language means that that language is used to teach most subjects in the curriculum and to interact in the program environment. In contrast, mother tongue instruction may mean that the program includes explicit instruction in L1 as a subject of study. Oral Competence - the ability to speak efficiently and successfully. It is defined as “the complex system that relates sounds to meanings. It makes clear and convincing oral presentations; listens effectively; clarifies information as needed. Also, the condition of being capable; ability a sufficient income to live on and the state of being legally competent or qualified Implementation – implementation is defined in our study as the action that must follow any preliminary thinking in order for something to actually happen. It refers to the carrying out of public policy. This process includes of rule-making, rule-administration and rule-adjudication. Factors impacting the implementation include the legislative intent, the administrative capacity of the implementing bureaucracy, interest group activity and opposition, and presidential or executive support. Mother tongue instruction - Mother tongue instruction refers to the use of the learners’ mother tongue as the medium of instruction. It can refer to the first language as a subject of instruction. It is considered to be an important component of quality education, particularly in the early years.