Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education has been encouraged by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to early childhood and primary education since 1953. Mother Tongue Based Bilingual or Multilingual Education is a program used since 1953 by different countries around the world like Indonesia, Cambodia, Nepal, Philippines and a lot more. This way of teaching is using the child’s first language, their mother tongue which is called the L1 in teaching in school to help them understand and capture the lesson and get instructions easily. MTB- MLE program could also preserve or revive the dying native languages around the globe.
One reason this was implemented and encouraged by UNESCO was because it has been…show more content… When children are offered opportunities to learn in their mother tongue, they are more likely to enroll and succeed in school (Kosonen, 2005) and their parents are more likely to communicate with teachers and participate in their children’s learning (Benson, 2002). Research also confirmed that children learn best in their mother tongue than any other language their school teaches them, which is more likely their L2 or the second language that they have encountered or learned. In addition to this, research also showed that children who are being taught with their mother tongue in their primary education can learn faster and does not find learning the lingua franca or their L2 difficult to learn. According to Professor Kathleen Heugh, children who do not learn enough are highly likely to become disgruntled youth, depriving them of the opportunity to enter the formal economy and generate sustainable livelihoods. MTB-MLE is critical to help these children learn better and improve their skills. Due to the MTB- MLE program which was perused by UNESCO, children become more confident, learn better, and they are more participative in the classroom for they truly understand what’s being taught to…show more content… This kind of system is very helpful since it would be easier to make the students understand more when using their mother tongue or native language in teaching them. Yes this program is nice for it has a lot of benefits, but implementing this has disadvantages which was not stated in journals and scholarly researches we have found. They did not take into account the disadvantages this program could bring. Translating text books and other school materials which are in English, which is the lingua franca would be costly and time consuming. There would be confusion in some concepts and some teachers may have a hard time translating technical terms to the native tongue. Another thing is, the child’s pronunciation in the English language may be affected. All these were not focused or stated in the many studies we have found about MTB- MLE. Yes, it may have a lot of advantages but the disadvantages can backfire the benefits we can