That is really a hard fact here in the Philippines. Most, if not all, of the teachers use the Filipino language in teaching especially in High School. By this, a communication gap happens to the students. The learning process takes time since the brain finds it hard to sythesize the input (the students being used to recieving lectures in Filipino and then reading learning materials in English are also expected to come up with papers and the like written in English) and the output becomes sloppy. The hell with the monicker that the Philippines is the largest English speaking country in southeast asia. The question is that do we speak it fluently? In my knowledge, a debate is still going on in the Congress for this issue. Whether to formalize the use of English as a medium of instruction in the country or rather use Filipino. English or Filipino, either ways will have an implication in our system of education. But sticking to one will definitely make a damn improvement. It will make us less confused. Yes quality input creates a quality output, but the throughput (synthesis) should also be of good quality to achieve the desired outcome. v(^0^)v

true true. most people are having a hard time speaking or sometimes writing in english because of this confusing system. our government wants us to excel in the english language but our medium for teaching is in Filipino. we (students) end up combining both languages which we now call tag-lish. for example, “san na u? d2 na me” if low quality is what we want, then this is the way to do it. if we really want to excel in english, which they say is important if you want to succeed, then there’s lot of work to do.

Uhm, Pao, why are you blogging in English? Why is de Quiros writing in English?

I don’t think we could put the blame solely on language. India is booming, yet it uses two languages: English and Hindi. That goes for Singapore as well. The Swiss learn three languages, too.

My point? Even if you translate all books to Tagalog, if the government would not invest in educaton, nothing will happen.

@ J: I’m blogging in English simply because I learned to write in English during my formative years. And yet I speak Tagalog because I can’t always express myself in English. But I still do not represent the millions who are struggling in the Language (not that I don’t have flaws in speaking or writing). Yes, you’re right, it’s high time we invest in Education. We also need to set our priorities straight by fixing governance and weeding out the useless and harmful trapos.

We are writing in English because that’s what people are used to. Sad.

That’s right. We are used to writing in English. So that should be a reason for us to be fluent in it. But for some reasons we are not.

The use of English is not really the problem. Our economy was second only to Japan in Asia during the 1960s, and we were using English then (And newspaper circulation was higher, too).

Singapore, Malaysia, India and the Scandinavian countries are proofs that just because English is a foreign language doesn’t mean people would never learn with it as medium.

The incompetence of our educational system, in my view, is because of two problems.

Problem #1, as Dean Arcilla pointed out before, is the government’s decision in 1990s to adopt Tagalog as medium of instruction for Elementary learners.

That’s not really a problem per se, but the thing is, all books are in English and English, as you said, has been the established language of business and
government in this country. Meaning, just like in India and Singapore, you have to be fluent in English in order for you to learn.

But Pinoys couldn’t be that fluent because the medium of instruction in the Elementary level, which are the formative levels, is not in English. Couple that with the trend among the local media to switch their primary language from English to tagalog (they tagalized cartoons like Voltes V, PBA and other commentaries and other talk shows, and they transformed news program from CNN-like World Tonight to tabloid-like TV Patrol and Saksi).

The result was the decline in our English proficiency, which led to poorer student performance in the collegiate level.

The solution to this would be simple. It’s either you overhaul all books in Math and Science and translate all of them to Filipino and make Tagalog the medium of instruction in college and the language of business and government or bring back English as medium of instruction for Elementary learners.

I believe the latter would be more practical.

Problem #2 is the embarrassingly low quality of teaching. Heck, some teachers in Mindanao can’t even pass examinations meant for high school students!

Now the solution for this problem is very complex. It requires political will and painful decisions. Stringent teaching education and regulation is one. More budget for education is another. But for you to solve Problem #2, you have to address Problem #1 first.

Which means we need to make a choice: solely Tagalog or solely English.

I really don’t care which one we would choose, but globalization tells me we should pick English.

@J hear hear! Couldn’t agree more. You even mentioned that the Japanese competitors in the NDC were better than the Filipinos in English. Notwithstanding the fact that they studied in the US. Still a shame shame for us Filipinos.

Filipino aka Tagalog will solve our problems?

You might have forgotten that not all Filipinos have Filipino/Tagalog as their native languages. There’d even be a huge misinterpretation because of many false friends among local languages. Take for example libog in Cebuano and in Tagalog. Pintas in Ilocano and Tagalog. Not all Filipinos cannot comprehend Tagalog that well because 3/4 of Filipinos are NOT-Tagalogs. Talk of internal colonization.

I prefer English than Tagalog aka Filipino because it’s a neutral language. In a multi-lingual country, there has to be a unifying language. A language that will not favor any ethnic group. In this case, Filipino/Tagalog will make things messier and ethnic rivalries will be stronger. Cebuanos and Ilocanos will just get angrier at the Tagalogs.

For the record, dagitab isn’t really a Tagalog word. It’s an ‘invented’ word(somethign that was FORCEDLY develop) to ‘purify’ Tagalog. It’s just a phony as the word salumpuwit.

By the way, I strongly believe that it’s not the medium of instruction that is the problem. it’s our methods of teaching. Even if you teach a child in his native language, if the method is just that bad, the performance of the student will still be that bad.

http://www.solfedphil.org/viewpage.php?page_id=3

@smile: I get your drift about words being invented and constantly added to Language, albeit forcedly, but isn’t Language dynamic and constantly changing? If it wasn’t, it’d suffer the same fate as Latin. You may have misinterpreted the gist of what I was trying to say (or I may have used the wrong wording), but what I meant is that sticking to native Languages as a medium of Education is better than confusing students with both mother tongues and English (English is necessary of course to communicate with a lot more people). I’m not saying we should use Tagalog per se. Or…. we could use English and reconstructing Mass Media into an English-spoken avenue for information.