DepEd issues guidelines for mother tongue teaching

Education Secretary Armin Luistro

Citing studies that say the language used at home is the most effective in teaching, the Department of Education (DepEd) has released guidelines for developing learning materials for schools that prescribe one’s mother tongue as their medium of instruction.

By producing educational materials that suit the specific needs of learners, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said educators would get “better learning outcomes.”

He said the DepEd came up with the guidelines to “synchronize and decentralize the production of ‘indigenized’ teaching and learning materials and the monitoring and evaluation of the DepEd’s mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE).”

“It is the easiest way for children to access the unfamiliar world of school learning,” Luistro said in a statement, citing local and international studies that show the effectivity of using a learner’s mother tongue in teaching.

Educators say students lose interest in learning when the mother tongue is disregarded in favor of an unfamiliar language.

The MTB-MLE program—which bridges the disconnect between the language used at home and at school—is being carried out from preschool up to Grade 3 and in the alternative learning system. Niña Calleja