Classroom language use in selected public elementary schools of Region III

• Main Author: Santos, Thelma C.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 1984
• Subjects: Multilingual education; Multilingualism
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/1289
• Institution: De La Salle University

This is a study to determine the profile of classroom language use in a multilingual setting. Within a period of 3 months, the researcher with a team of supervisors and master teachers made actual class observations and conducted interviews with school administrators in 120 randomly selected public elementary schools of Region III. These schools were grouped according to a set of categories, namely: linguistic area (non-Tagalog vs. Tagalog), geographical area (rural vs. urban), type of school (central vs. peripheral). Classroom observations in English-medium classes on all grade levels were done for a period of 10-15 minutes per class. A total of 1,270 teachers were observed. Tape recordings were done in 180 classes. In most cases, classroom interactions were recorded by tallying the frequencies of language patterns under the following classification: English utterances, Pilipino utterances, and code-switching utterances. To find out whether significant differences occurred between proportions of language patterns used by teachers in different categories, the z test of significance was applied. Percentages of occurrences/responses were used to determine the following: teacher talk-pupil talk ratio as regards English use in the three subject areas, types of questions and responses that took place in the classroom, and opinion of school administrators on teachers' use of Pilipino in English-medium classes. Teachers, irrespective of the categories set by the researcher, use language patterns typologized as English, Pilipino and code-switching utterances in teaching English-medium classes. An analysis of the transcriptions reveals that teachers resort to Pilipino for comprehension and clarification of directions/instructions pupils resort to Pilipino whenever they fail to express themselves in English. The grouping of teachers according to linguistic category shows that Tagalog speaking teachers use more English utterances than non-Tagalog speakers. The findings based on geographical grouping show there are particu