Listening from the Hearts of the Muslim Learners: Untold Testimonies on the Implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education

Abstract

The implementation of the Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education in the Philippine has been marred with a lot of challenges. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using mother tongue in addressing the needs of Muslim learners in the Municipality of Arakan, particularly on the successful implementation of MTB-MLE program. This study sought to analyze the gathered questions and responses of the participants. Results showed that their insight on the implementation is that they faced difficulties in comprehension. Also, the printed materials were written in local dialect, they had the difficulty in reading and writing the local dialect, and some terms were difficult to understand. Self-review, reading of the materials, and asking peers for help were some of their coping strategies. They suggested that teachers and classmates should speak in Filipino for comprehension.