Effectiveness of Mother Tongue Based (MTB) Instruction in the Performance of Grade I Pupils in Math

AUTHOR(S)

Fate D. Casinillo

ABSTRACT

Use of the appropriate language in teaching learners greatly contributes to academic performance and success in school. Language plays a vital role in the learning process of the elementary learners. Teachers must ensure that the language to be used in the different subject areas are the language first heard at home (Benson, 2004). In relation to DepEd Order No.16, s. 2012 which provides the guidelines on the nationwide implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) that started in the school year 2012-2013, elementary schools nationwide were prompted to adopt such a system. Mother Tongue Based (MTB) is a subject and as medium of instruction in all subject areas in Grade I except for Filipino and English. With these, teachers and pupils had hard time in translating Mathematics language to Mother Tongue. This is the reason why the researcher conducted this study to evaluate the effectiveness of MTB instruction in the performance of Math in grade I.
It was revealed that the pre-test performance of the Grade I pupils in Math for the experimental group was moderate while in the control group was high. Moreover, the post-test performance of the Grade I pupils in Math for the control and experimental groups were very high. Furthermore, it was also revealed that there is significant difference between the scores in the pretest and post-test performances of the Grade I pupils in Math for the experimental and control group and there is also significant difference on the scores of the post-test Math performance between the two groups. This means that both MTB and English as medium of instruction in teaching Math for Grade I is effective. It is recommended to implement the formulated Intervention Plan in Mathematics to improve or maintain the performance of the pupils.