Unread Letter

When I was a public school teacher in Manolo Fortich National High School in Bukidnon, I once mailed a letter to the major broad sheets in Manila. It's a letter to the president expressing my silly views on the way the country is treating English. Apparently it was never published. I doubt if this letter ever reached the president. So Im publishing it here...


LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES

A Better English Proficiency Program for Filipinos

The government’s effort to improve our English is making waves in our schools. I am a high school English teacher here in Bukidnon and I have felt the government’s pressure in trying to improve the English of our students.

However, as a Mass Communication graduate, I felt that the government’s program on English improvement is lopsided. It only targets the teachers’ ability or inability to speak sound English.

I was once one of the more than 500 teachers sent to a lavish English-Focused-teaching seminar 2 years ago in one of the top hotels here in Mindanao—The Apo View in Davao City. We were to be called “Mentors”, and our primary task is to monitor and help our co-teachers in teaching Math, Science, English, and other English-based subjects. The week-long seminar emphasized on the need to teach these subjects in straightforward and grammatically correct English. The “mentoring” program was to be a rigid monitoring scheme on the teachers that requires monthly reports to be sent to the organizers of the Department’s English proficiency program. But until now, despite several other follow-up seminars and revisions on the program itself, our teachers still struggle with their spoken English. I could still overhear teachers who teach using the dialect, straight from beginning to end of the class.

Until now, the government still thinks the teachers are the only cause to the betterment or degradation of our students’ English.

As a communications graduate in our country’s premier university, I believe the government should look at the other causes of the problem on our degrading English.

I believe Mass Media giants like ABS-CBN and GMA play a vital role in the degrading English of our students today. Most students today study in front of the TV watching purely-Tagalog tele-novelas in an average of 6 hours a day from early afternoon to late in the evening. Even most TV commercials and other programs like news and sitcoms are spoken in straight Tagalog. This trend has been going on since the advent of Marimar more than a decade ago.

Students now are more exposed to Tagalog than English. In school, if they get lucky, they should be enjoying at least 3 subjects spoken in English. But most teachers still prefer the dialect, and students are also more comfortable with the dialect—when they talk among themselves, even when they talk to teachers inside the classrooms.
Here in Bukidnon, I always talk to my students in English, but they always respond in the dialect.

We are practically having a generation of students that mainly gets their values from Latin and Korean tele-novela actors who surprisingly speak fluent Tagalog. Gone are the days when I could watch English movies on TV. Even English movies and cartoon shows nowadays are dubbed in Tagalog. Have our TV companies totally underestimated our grasp for English? Or are they just pacing with today’s trend where English is already a totally foreign field of study to the Filipinos?

Our students are exposed to Tagalog twice than they are exposed to English. Because of this, they feel that English is just a burden, an insult against our local language. Students say, “We are Filipinos, why are we forced to speak English”.

During my stint as “mentor”, I have encountered students, and even teachers who think that speaking English all the time, as required by DepEd, is anti-Filipino.

At the current exposure our students are getting from our 2 TV giants, I’m afraid our students will continue to have difficulties speaking English.

If the government is really serious with the campaign for better English, perhaps the Media sector should also be involved.

Very Sincerely

Me