A new curriculum in the Philippine Educational System is now implemented. Several revisions in the old curriculum was made and more features (which are believed to help in the development of the quality of education in the Philippines) were introduced and now finally implemented. One of the features offered by the newly implemented curriculum is the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). With the insertion of this program in the K-12 curriculum, several questions were raised and doubts to some were formed. Such questions arouse were, “Is the mother tongue-based-multilingual education (MTB-MLE) really needed in the teaching and learning process?, or will it not be a waste of time having this program in our present curriculum?’’

According to Susane Malone, SIL International, as she discussed at a seminar, “MT-based MLE refers to the use of students’ mother tongue and two or more additional languages as languages of instruction in school. In other contexts, the term is used to describe bilingual education across multiple language communities.” Meaning to say, the students’ first language will be a great help for them to begin learning oral and then written second language. They will be instructed using the language that they consider as the first for them or their first language. From their first to third grade level in school, they are provided with opportunities to gain initial literacy in their first language. Students in these grade levels have no enough knowledge about second or even about the third language, therefore, the language in which the students are used to will help them better understand other languages that the teacher may teach or give them. Another thing is that, the Philippines is a multilingual country. Different languages or should I say dialects are spoken by Filipinos in the country. This fact signifies that it is not only Filipino which is best to use in teaching Filipino students – but with their mother tongue. Since most researchers and practitioners agree that it takes 2-3 years to build basic communication skills and 5-7 years to develop cognitive and academic proficiency in a new language (Commins, 2000; Thomas and Collier, 2001) mother tongue will be used as the students’ foundation of learning. As written in a Language Learning Journal by Wolgang Butzkamm,he stressed out the theory saying that “using the mother tongue, we have (1) learnt to think, (2) learnt to communicate and (3) acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar. The mother tongue opens the door, not only to its own grammar, but to all grammars, in as much as it awakens the potential for universal grammar that lies within all of us. This foreknowledge is the result of interactions between a first language and our fundamental linguistic endowment, and is the foundation on which we build our selves. It is the greatest asset people bring to the task of foreign language learning. For this reason, the mother tongue is the master key to foreign languages, the tool which gives us the fastest, surest, most precise, and most complete means of accessing a foreign language.”These are all true since mother tongue is enough to be considered as the mother of all languages;children gain competence with its help. In support to this, the Inter-dependence Theory (develpoed by Cummins) explains that concepts and skills acquired in the first language is transferable to the second language and

affect that rate and level of development in the second languag.The idea is that that greater the first language abilitied and the more underlying linguistic knowledge availableto support the development of the second language,the more rapid and complete the acquisition.Related to this is the notion that there is a Common Underlying Proficiency where concepts and skills acquired in the first language are transferable to or are accessible through the second language.This widely accepted theory explains that if the Common Underlying Proficiency is weak,this will affect the development of the second language.Now, how are the students going to learn other subjects written in foreign language such as English, if knowledge in their mother tongue is weak?

Aside from the aforementioned thoeries,the teaching of mother tongue in the Philippines is supported with legel bases such as