[EDLING:2194] Philippines: English rebirth seen boosting total learning process in schools

[Francis M Hult]

Via lgpolicy...

>  English rebirth seen boosting total learning process ...
> Monday, December 18 2006 @ 01:21 PM GMT
> 
> English rebirth seen boosting total learning process in schools
> 
> The impending revival of English as medium of instruction will end the
> "language interference" that has impeded in a big way the "total learning
> process" in schools, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte said. One of the
> leading contributors to basic education's general decline over the last 30
> years is what linguists call "language interference,"  according to
> Villafuerte. "The targeting of the simultaneous learning of two languages
> (English and Pilipino) under the bilingual policy of 1974 is just too much
> for our school children, especially in the lower grades," Villafuerte
> pointed out.
> 
> "If the child happens to be a non-Tagalog speaker -- and majority of our
> kids in school are non-Tagalog speakers -- learning English and Pilipino
> actually means absorbing two 'foreign' languages at the same time, an
> almost impossible task," he said. Villafuerte is one of the six authors of
> the House-approved bill seeking to reinstate English as the teaching
> language. The other authors are Representatives Eduardo Gullas, Edmundo
> Reyes Jr., Cynthia Villar, Alipio Cirilo Badelles and Raul Del Mar. Gullas
> earlier expressed confidence the Senate will pass the House-endorsed bill
> shortly. This, after he obtained the support of Senate President Manny
> Villar, Senate President Pro-Tempore Juan Flavier and Senators Edgardo
> Angara and Panfilo Lacson.
> 
> Flavier is chair of the Senate education committee. Angara and Lacson
> chair the subcommittees on higher and basic education. "The processing of
> two languages at the same time under the bilingual policy served as a
> formidable barrier not only to English mastery, but more importantly, to
> the entire learning process in schools," Villafuerte said. He added:
> "While long before, and immediately after World War II, the Philippines
> was proudly number one in Asia in English proficiency, because English was
> the medium of instruction then, this was abandoned in favor of bilingual
> (Pilipino-English) instruction." Villafuerte described the bilingual
> policy as "a case of trying to fix something that was not broken to begin
> with." In the process, he said the policy merely created the unintended
> consequence of spoiling not just the average Filipino's mastery of
> English, but basic education as a whole.
> 
> "The policy became an obstacle for students learning Chemistry and Physics
> for the first time. And as the complexity of the concepts and applications
> increase, the more taxing the multiple-language processing becomes,
> considering how most languages (outside English) do not have the
> vocabulary of English when it comes to the subject of Science," he said.
> Without adequate competence in English, Villafuerte lamented that students
> are facing "increased difficulty in mastering core disciplines such as
> Mathematics and Science." "There are numerous words, concepts, and ideas
> in Mathematics and Science subjects that have no direct translation in
> Pilipino. To invent new words for these concepts and ideas merely
> heightens the complexity of the learning process," he said. "Other Asian
> nations such as South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, not to mention China, are
> now consciously developing skilled workers wholly competent in English,
> and therein lies our diminishing advantage,"  Villafuerte warned. (PNA)
> 
> 
> http://www.bayanihan.org/html/article.php/20061218132114328