Burton English 17

• Language policy is a relatively new academic field that has evolved immensely since the 1960s
• Language policy began with a philosophy of modernization through national development and focused more on linguistic homogeneity than language preservation
• Language policy has since moved toward a critical perspective that considers issues of equality and justice through language rights
• The MTB-MLE policy in the Philippines is indicative of this shift in perspective at a national level, yet the local-level perspective is notably absent from the discussion
• Ideological spaces


  Openings in language policy where societal and policy discourses begin to accept and value non-dominant languages for education
• Implementational spaces


  Openings in language policy where content and media for instruction utilize local, contextualized viewpoints rather than the majority, decontextualized perspectives traditionally observed in educational systems
• Spolsky's theory of language policy


  Accounts for the choices made by individual speakers on the basis of rule-governed patterns recognized by the speech community

  
• Components of Spolsky's language policy

  • Beliefs
  • Practices
  • Management

  
• Beliefs (language ideology)


  The values held by members of a speech community toward language and language use
• Practices


  The language selections that people actually make, including the sound, word, and grammatical choices made within a community, as well as the societal rules about when and where different varieties of language should be used
• Management (language planning)


  Any efforts made to influence language practices, including written legislation in support of a particular language policy

  
• Ricento and Hornberger's language policy and planning model


  Considers actors within each of the national, institutional, and interpersonal levels, and how reform implementation approaches from the national or community level interact to influence implementation at the classroom level

  
• The multidirectional nature of language interpretation and implementation is a necessary, but conflict-laden, process that suggests language policy is not simply defined by national level statements

  
• The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948) affirmed the right to education without discrimination, including on the grounds of language
• UNESCO reports in 1953, 1999, and 2003 have confirmed the value of education in the mother tongue
• Benefits of mother tongue instruction

  • Improved academic skills
  • Stronger classroom participation
  • Increased access to education
  • Development of critical thinking skills
  • Cultural pride
  • Increased parent participation
  • Increased achievement of girls
• Threshold level hypothesis


  Children need to attain a threshold of competence in their first language before they can successfully gain competence in a second language
• Interdependency hypothesis


  The level of second language proficiency acquired by a child is a function of the child's level of proficiency in the first language at the point when intensive second language instruction begins
• Research on literacy outcomes related to mother tongue instruction has been mostly done in North America and Europe, but has served as rationale for propagating its usage throughout the rest of the world
• Longitudinal studies in the US found that language minority children educated in their home language for a majority of their elementary school years demonstrated stronger gains in English proficiency than those educated only in English or for just a short time in their first language
• The Ife project in Nigeria from 1970-1978 showed students who learned in their first language for six years demonstrated higher overall academic achievement gains than students who only learned in their first language for three years
• A longitudinal study in Lubuagan, Philippines beginning in 1999 found positive outcomes from a mother tongue pilot project
• Literacy skills develop more easily and efficiently when they are based in a child's understanding of their first language
• MTB-MLE initiatives


  • Showed that students who learned in their first language for six years demonstrated higher overall academic achievement gains than students who only learned in their first language for three years
  • The first group showed no difference in English proficiency from the second group despite having had fewer years with English as the medium of instruction
• Mother tongue pilot project in the Philippines

  • Consistent advantages were noted for the children in the mother tongue schools, they scored significantly higher than students in the control schools in math, reading, Filipino, and English
• Use of the mother tongue alone does not guarantee positive results, consideration must be given to the way in which the policy is implemented, both from a national and local standpoint
• Language ideology


  Sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use
• Language ideologies

  Affected by a group's consensus about which language variety is appropriate for which speaker to use when addressing which listeners for which purposes
• Language ideologies are highly contextualized and dependent upon many factors, they are formed through historical and socio-cultural circumstances and influenced by the experience of a particular social position
• Schools commonly reflect the ideological values of those at the national level because of the expectation that they will carry on the established ideals
• Ideologies are not simply imposed upon individuals by the 'official' culture of the ruling class but are represented by a diverse set of implicit or explicit beliefs held by members of the community
• A change in beliefs requires an observation or experience that challenges the existing idea, since ideologies are beliefs that are rooted in historical, political, and socio-cultural contexts, this change is a long and complex process
• Two ways language ideologies can be categorised

  • Linguistic unification (favors use of a dominant language)
  • Linguistic pluralism (supports maintenance of minority languages)
• Linguistic unification was a widespread perspective held by linguists in the 1960s during a time in which modernization was valued as an international development approach
• Linguistic pluralism advocates for a multilingual approach and preservation of languages, often discussed within a linguistic human rights perspective
• Ideologies among non-dominant language speakers often favor dominant languages in education, this is partly due to hundreds of years of colonial thinking that devalues indigenous languages
• The economic value associated with English has pushed it to the top of the learning agenda for many stakeholders, while sacrificing local languages
• Strong ideologies favoring English and other European languages naturally create resistance to mother tongue instruction from many stakeholders
• Without the support of teachers and parents, governmental attempts to change language policies stand little chance of being successful
• Some studies have identified value for mother tongue instruction among teachers and parents, particularly in the early years of learning