Status of implementation of the 1987 policy on bilingual education in Cebuano and Hiligaynon tertiary schools

• Main Author: Fuentes, Gloria G.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1999
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Cebuano language; Hiligaynon language; Education, Bilingual; Universities and colleges; Language attrition; Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/817
• Institution: De La Salle University

The study mainly aims to determine the status of implementation of the 1987 Policy on Bilingual Education (or BEP) among Cebuano and Hiligaynon tertiary institutions. This study is a follow up of the 1986 evaluation conducted by Segovia hence, the problem formulation, research design, and methodology have been patterned after the earlier evaluation of Segovia. However, due to unavailability of disaggregated data for Cebu sample, the comparison of results involved the Iloilo-Hiligaynon respondents only.Primarily, the study was concerned with the programs and procedures developed by the institutions for the implementation of the Bilingual Education Policy. Since all 24 participating schools were found to be non-implementing, the researcher could proceed with only the interview and classroom observations. The other instruments intended for implementing schools--Self-rating Test of Communicative Language Ability and parent attitude questionnaire--could not be administered. For the interview, the researcher used an interview schedule adapted from the 1986 study of Segovia. To determine the language of instruction, four schools were selected--two public and two private--from each of the three areas covered by the study. Four classes were observed from each school thus a total of 48 teachers were observed for at least 20 minutes. The observation focused on teacher talk only due to some difficulties in recording classroom interaction. The results showed a decline in the status of BEP implementation, particularly among the Hiligaynon schools in Iloilo because in the 1986 survey, there were five institutions who claimed implementation. Between the two ethnolinguistic groups in the study--Cebuano and Hiligaynon--the Cebuanos were observed to be less positive in their attitudes towards BEP than their Hiligaynon counterparts. Another significant finding of the study was the lack of teaching materials in Filipino and the government's lack of support and follow-up of the schools' bilingual programs as the most frequently cited causes of non-implementation. The study also revealed an improved perception regarding the students' oral and written competence in Filipino English competence, however, was still perceived to be deteriorating. Comparing the results of the 1986 and 1999 surveys involving the Iloilo-Hiligaynon respondents, the researcher discovered that not much has changed in the attitude of the Ilonggos towards BEP 13 years after the first survey, except for decreasing resistance towards Filipino as medium of instruction. With regard to the language of instruction among non-implementing schools, the results of the study showed English to be the main medium of instruction with occasional code switching between English and the local language. Code switching was observed to be the language when the utterances were not about the topic or lesson otherwise, English was the main medium of communication in the classroom.