English language teaching in the Philippines (2014)

World Englishes, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 472–485, 2014. 0883-2919

English language teaching in the Philippines

ISABEL PEFIANCO MARTIN∗

ABSTRACT: Research in world Englishes (WE) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) have long beenpromoting what Pakir describes as ‘common working axioms’ (2009: 228) which uphold the pluricentricityof English: the existence of varieties, the acceptance of language change and adaptation, and the highlightingof discourse strategies. These principles have had profound effects on our understanding of the Englishlanguage and, consequently, on the teaching of the language. In this paper, I argue that, for all the benefitsoffered by varieties of English, it might not be appropriate to teach varieties explicitly as a model to non-native learners of the language. I make this argument with the Philippine education context in mind, andpropose a framework for Philippine ELT that recognizes both the identity and communication functions ofthe language.

INTRODUCTION

With the introduction of the world Englishes (WE) paradigm to Filipino scholars andteachers of English in the 1990s, questions about the dominance of ‘native speaker’ modelsin Philippine classrooms began to surface. This was followed by a surge in the popularityof Philippine English (PE) research and consequently, calls for the language variety to bepromoted in ELT. Borlongan (2011), for instance, argues for the re-training of teachers,the development of new instructional materials based on existing corpora of PhilippineEnglish, and the re-envisioning of instructional leadership in managing innovations inEnglish language teaching in the country. He pushes for these ‘little sacrifices that arenot to be held back so as to finally put Philippine English on the pedestal of establishedEnglishes, together with American, British, and Australian Englishes’ (Borlongan 2011:121).

Friginal (2011: 71), in presenting data showing the frequency of the use of the modalwould in PE, argues for pedagogical applications of his findings: ‘It seems that usingeducated PhilE as a target English in the national setting for public and private schools(in contrast to teaching American English) is more appropriate because, in the first place,PhilE is grammatically and semantically comparable to target core English.’ Borlonganand Friginal are not alone in pushing for the promotion of non-native varieties in theEnglish language classroom. Kirkpatrick (2007: 193) also argues that ‘the advantagesof choosing a local model in outer-circle countries in which the local variety has alreadygained widespread social acceptance outweigh the advantages of choosing a native speakermodel.’ However, in the case of the Philippines, I argue that, for all the benefits offered bythe Philippine variety of English, it might not be appropriate to teach this variety explicitlyas a model to learners of the English language. The alternative, of course, is not the status

∗Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, 1108, Philippines.E-mail: [email protected]

C© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

English language teaching in the Philippines 473

quo, which is the continued reliance on ‘native speaker’ models. How then should Filipinoteachers of English approach ELT? The answer may lie in the WE and ELF paradigms asthese are applied to the educational context.

WE AND ELF IN THE CONTEXT OF EDUCATION

Pakir’s (2009: 233) analysis of research frameworks in WE and ELF point to four ‘workingaxioms’ that the WE and ELF paradigms share. These common principles include ‘empha-sizing the pluricentricity of English, seeking variety recognition, accepting that languagechanges and adapts itself to new environments, and observing the discourse strategies ofEnglish- knowing bilinguals’ (Pakir 2009: 233). However, Pakir also makes the tentativeconclusion that WE and ELF are ‘similar in many ways but dissimilar in significant ones’(Pakir 2009: 234). One significant area of difference, according to Pakir (2009: 231),is what she describes as the tendency of ELF research to focus on ‘connectivity minuslinguaculture.’ While WE research hinges on the sociolinguistic realities of Englishes,especially in the Outer Circle English (OCE) contexts, ELF research concerns itself withthe ‘the transient and incipient nature’ of the interactions of Expanding Circle English(ECE) users as they come into contact with each other (Pakir 2009: 233). WE research isinterested in the ‘indigenized’ nature of English, while ELF research focuses primarily onthe ‘contact’ nature of the language (Pakir 2009: 230). By doing so, ELF research doesnot account for the indigenization and identity-marking processes found in OCE contextswhere Englishes are used in greater depth and range.

Like Pakir, Seidlhofer acknowledges that WE and ELF have a common ground. However,she also argues that the ELF paradigm, while drawing from the main principles of WE,operates on a different set of realities (Seidlhofer 2009). For Seidlhofer, ELF is ‘differentin kind, functionally and not formally defined; it is not a variety of English but a variableway of using it: English that functions as a lingua franca’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 77). Thus,ELF is more concerned with intercultural communication, a reality that she believes is‘not contained in, or constrained by, traditional (and notoriously tendentious) ideas of whatconstitutes “a language”’ Seidlhofer (2011: 81). On Pakir’s claim that ELF research focusesprimarily on ECE users, Seidlhofer agrees. However, she asserts that ELF communicationhappens not just in ECE contexts, but also across all the circles of Kachru’s Three Circlesmodel (Seidlhofer 2009: 236). In contrast, WE research, according to Seidlhofer (2009:237), by concerning itself with OCE contexts alone, does not account for the use of Englishamong ECE countries, which is ‘the most widespread contemporary use of English – thatwhich from a global perspective actually constitutes the prevailing reality of English, withthe largest number of speakers.’

With the WE paradigm aligning towards the indigenization of English, and the ELFframework focusing primarily on the contact nature of the language, the two paradigmsmay be located on opposite poles of Kirkpatrick’s (2007) identity-communication contin-uum, which corresponds to Mahboob’s (2010) user-uses complementarity. The continuumreveals the two major functions of the English language. Kirkpatrick describes the identityfunction of English as evident in local situations to signal identity within a speech com-munity. Thus this variety ‘will display a wide range of distinctive phonological, lexical,syntactic and cultural features’ (Kirkpatrick 2007: 172). On the other hand, the commu-nication function of the language is used across speech communities and usually exhibitsfewer distinctive features. The WE and ELF paradigms, having opposing tendencies in


474 Isabel Pefianco Martin

their approaches, also differ in perspectives towards English language teaching (ELT).One important issue concerning applications of WE and ELF to ELT is the questionof which model of the English language should be target of teaching and learning. By‘model’ here is meant ‘a linguistic ideal that a learner and teacher keep in mind in thecourse of language instruction’ (Berns 2006: 725). Kachru (1991) offers a functional,dynamic approach, which is based on a polymodel perspective. The polymodel concept isthe alternative to the nativist approach of presenting one standard model, usually a ‘nativespeaker’ model. Berns (2006: 725) describes the polymodel approach as ‘responsive tothe sociocultural dimensions of functional and formal diversity in speech communitiesrequiring competence in English.’

Other than taking a polymodel approach, WE also pushes for the promotion of localcultures which inform the language varieties. Kachru (1980: 7) himself calls for the useof non-native literature in the English language classroom and argues that using such textsoffers both teachers and learners of English an opportunity to embrace the language varietyas their own. According to Kachru (1980: 7), using non-native literature in the Englishlanguage classroom allows learners to ‘see a non-native language as part of the culturewith which they identify. The English language thus acquires both formal and functionalrealism.’ Sadly, non-native literature in English is still relegated to the margins of languageand literature education today, especially in the Philippines where texts of American andEuropean origins remain privileged in school curricula (Martin 2007).

A WE approach to teaching and learning the English language takes a tolerant positionon learner ‘errors.’ Li (2010: 631) challenges the ‘fine line between errors and innovations’when he asked the question ‘When does an unconventional form become an innovation?’(Li 2010: 617). The issue of identifying a feature or innovation of a language variety is atricky one. In the case of Philippine English, Gonzalez (1983) argues that ‘errors’ ceaseto become such when the educated elite continue to use these ‘errors.’ However, Gonzalezalso admits that it is difficult to distinguish in absolute terms ‘errors’ from features.

An interesting phenomenon concerning the emergence of varieties of English is the factthat these varieties have similar non-standard linguistic features. Kirkpatrick provides a listof these shared features, which include pronunciation and grammatical features, such as thetendency of speakers to avoid using fricatives and complex verb tenses (Kirkpatrick 2007:173). Among users of the language in Southeast Asia, Kirkpatrick provides another list ofshared non-standard phonological features such as reduction of consonant clusters and themerging of long and short vowel sounds, among others (Kirkpatrick 2010: 173). Kirkpatrickargues that the traditional approach of correcting so-called ‘errors’ is a waste of curriculumtime, as these features rarely present problems in communication between Southeast Asianspeakers of English. As more and more users of the varieties interact with each other, theshared non-standard features among the varieties expand into what Seidlhofer describesas ‘commonalities that could facilitate global international/intercultural communication’(Seidlhofer 2011: 79). These commonalities are the concern of ELF research and pedagogy.Seidlhofer (2011: 189) argues that the widespread use of ELF ‘brings home the simultaneityof learning and using in a particular striking way.’ While traditional ELT practice separateslanguage use from language learning, ELF pedagogical practices view ‘learning and using(as) not consecutive by simultaneous processes’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 189). Seidlhofer explainsthat traditional ELT positions language use as dependent on language learning. Such a viewdoes not capture the reality of language learning.



How does language learning operate in the first place? It is a question all teachers oflanguages must ask, but often do not. Widdowson (2009: 211) tells us that language learningis ‘a process of recurrent unlearning and relearning, whereby encoding rules are modified,extended, re-aligned or abandoned altogether to accommodate new language data.’ Sucha view of language learning as a process that takes place simultaneously with languageuse certainly has implications on teaching the English language. ELT then becomes ‘amatter of guiding this process of learning by unlearning, and the actual input presentedby teachers is of secondary importance’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 183). Unlike WE pedagogy,ELF does not ask which language to teach or not teach? ELF pedagogy is concerned notwith ‘learning a language but learning to language’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 197). According toSeidlhofer (2011: 197):

the purpose of teaching becomes the development of a capability for effective use which involves theprocess of exploiting whatever linguistic resources are available, not matter how formally “defective”.

For ELT in ASEAN, Kirkpatrick (2010: 177) argues that ‘rather than focusing on aspecific variety of English, the ASEAN school curriculum needs to make a radical moveto teach English as it is used in social contexts within the region.’ Kirkpatrick refers tothis as ‘the multilingual model,’ combined with the adoption of a ‘lingua franca approachto the teaching of English.’ This lingua franca approach involves the use of strategies forconstructing and negotiating meaning in communicative events. One strategy is the use ofthe learner’s own language (L1), which is part of the linguistic repertoire of any languagelearner.

In Figure 1 (WE and ELF in the context of education), I summarize the commonworking axioms of WE and ELF, as well as the basic tenets and pedagogical applicationsof each paradigm. Adding to the work of Kachru (1980, 1983, 1991), Pakir (2009), andSeidlhofer (2009, 2011), I superimpose Kirkpatrick’s identity-communication continuum(Kirkpatrick 2007, 2010), as well as Mahboob’s (2010) user-uses complementarity on thetwo frameworks of WE and ELF.

ELT IN THE PHILIPPINES

Having surveyed the tenets of WE and ELF, and general applications of each paradigm ineducational settings, I now turn to a specific context – ELT in the Philippines. My aim inthis section is to describe the ELT practices that dominate and to discuss the appropriatenessof these practices in promoting English language learning among Filipino students.

Among ASEAN countries, the Philippines occupies a unique position in that Englishwas brought to the country by the Americans, rather than the British. Three hundredyears of Spanish occupation did nothing to make the Spanish language occupy the sameprestige status that English enjoys today. However, about fifty years of American rule wasenough to put the English language in its present elevated position in Philippine society.English came to the Philippine classrooms through American soldiers who first taught inCorregidor in 1898. With the Americans came public education and a directive for Englishto be used as the medium of instruction (MOI) in all levels. During this period of colonialrule (1898–1946), English was taught as if the Filipino students were native speakers ofthe language. (Martin 2002) One indication of this may be found in the following quotefrom an American school principal in 1911:



Figure 1. WE and ELF in the context of education

We must insist that every day in his first three years of school life, the Filipino child has a dialoguelesson, and we must make him commit that lesson absolutely to memory. For instance suppose his firstlesson is as brief as this:Good morning, Pedro.Good morning, Jose.How are you this morning, Pedro? Thank you, I am very well. It would not be cruelty to animals to insiston any second grade pupil’s committing that lesson to memory (cited in Martin 2002).

In the quote above, the school principal believes that Filipino students will learn theEnglish language only by memorizing dialogues. Such was the practice in Americanschools at that time. Other than dialogue memorization, ELT in the colonial public schoolsalso promoted other mechanical methods of teaching the language, namely, stressingeye movements in reading, asking students to read aloud, making them perform grammardrills, and expecting them to recite memorized passages. However, a series of studies of thePhilippine educational system at this time (such as the Monroe Report of 1925) indicatedthat these ELT strategies, as well as the choice of English as MOI, did not contribute toan increase in learning outcomes. Despite this, the English as MOI policy persisted untilafter the Second World War, when the Philippines gained political independence from theUS (Martin 2002).

In the 1970s, with nationalists clamoring for wider use of the national language, Englishshared its MOI status with Filipino in a bilingual education scheme that is still observedat present times (Gonzalez 2003: 2). This Bilingual Education Policy (BEP) came under



scrutiny in the last few years after Filipino students were reported to have performed badlyin international tests of math and science (Martin 2010: 248–249). The dismal performanceof the Filipino students, as well as low test scores they have been receiving in nationalachievement tests, was attributed to low proficiency in English, which was the languageof the tests. Thus in 2009, the Department of Education (DepEd), in an effort to addressthe continuing deteriorating of basic education, pushed for the use of the mother tonguesin the early levels of elementary schooling (Department of Education 2009). The move isknown as mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE).

A quick survey of memoranda, circulars and orders from the DepEd reveals threedominant ELT practices in the Philippines, namely, the Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) approach, English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and Task-Based Language Teachingapproach (TBLT). Interestingly, the popularity of these ELT approaches is in proportionto the number of memoranda and circulars, as well as corresponding training programson these ELT approaches (see appendix for the list of DepEd memoranda). For teachersof English, especially in the Philippines, the introduction of ‘new’ language teachingapproaches is always welcome as these add to the teachers’ bag of tricks in the classroom.However, the teachers may not realize that language teaching approaches are not neutralas these always come with a set of assumptions that may or may not apply to the uniquecontexts of teaching and learning English in the Philippine.

ESP became popular in the Philippine ELT scene in the 1990s. This popularity isattributed to the growing global spread of English, increasing demand for Philippinelaborers, and the need for development in science and technology in the country. TeachingEnglish for specific purposes was believed to offer an ideal means to equip Filipinocitizens with the English language skills they needed to upgrade the state of science andtechnology in the country, as well as to meet demands for overseas employment of Filipinoworkers. The approach was presented as scientific and culture-free, which Valdez (2011:74) describes as ‘[fitting] the utilitarian purposes of government, educational institutions,and the Filipino people.’ ESP was widely criticized during this time for its promotion ofdependence on Western technology and knowledge.

Seidlhofer (2011) warns about ESP approaches, especially in situations where the pur-poses conform to native speaker norms. According to Seidlhofer (2011: 200):

most learners have other and far less specific and predictable purposes, and it does not seem reasonableto impose such ESP objectives on them, especially since they are unlikely to attain them anyway. Whatthey need is what is actually referred to as EGP – English for General Purposes – English that can beadapted to any purpose and made appropriate to any context.

Another popular ELT approach in the Philippines is Task-Based Language Teaching(TBLT), which is associated with the Philippines English Language Teaching (PELT)Project undertaken by the DepEd in the 1990s. TBLT, which claims to be more mindfulof the nature of second language acquisition (SLA), was developed as an alternative totraditional form-focused ELT practices. (Ellis 2003; Nunan 2004) The approach drawsfrom Skehan’s (1996) three dimensions of performance, namely, complexity, accuracy, andfluency. For TBLT, the goal of language learning is to acquire these three components ofsecond language acquisition. However, as Seidelhofer (2011) has pointed out, complex-ity, accuracy, and fluency are defined in reference to native speaker norms. Seidelhoferspecifically reacts to Ellis’s description of TBLT as a situation where ‘learners should



Table 1. Developing accuracy vs. developing fluency in the English language classroom (Richards 2006)

Activities focusing on accuracy Activities focusing on fluency

• Reflect classroom use of language • Reflect natural use of language• Focus on the formation of correct examples of language • Focus on achieving communication

• Require meaningful use of language• Practice language out of context • Require the use of communication strategies• Practice small samples of language • Produce language that may not be predictable• Do not require meaningful communication• Control choice of language • Seek to link language use to context

largely have to rely on their own resources (linguistic and non-linguistic) in order to com-plete the activity’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 184). Would language learners be allowed to call on alltheir linguistic resources, including their own languages? According to Seidlhofer (2011:184), the tendency of TBLT is to design tasks that do not aim to ‘develop communicativeproficiency as such but proficiency in confirming to native-speaker norms.’

The most popular approach in Philippine ELT is the communicative language teach-ing approach, which draws its principles from Hyme’s (1966) notion of communicativecompetence. Canale and Swain (1980) later provided concrete pedagogical applicationsof communicative competence with the expansion of the concept to include three compo-nents, namely, grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence. However, in Canaleand Swain’s (1980) discussion of CLT practices, Leung (2005: 128) sees ‘traces of the na-tive speaker’ perspective, specifically, when Canale and Swain suggested that non-nativelearners of English are not expected by native speakers of the language to have mastered theappropriate sociocultural rules in given settings. Following the CLT approach, ELT focusesprimarily on teaching the language as a functional tool for communication, which meansthat language teaching does not pay much attention to form or structure. In this approach,contrasts are made between developing accuracy and developing fluency in language use,the latter being the goal of CLT. Richards (2006: 14) summarizes this in Table 1.

The above dichotomy between developing accuracy and developing fluency, which ispromoted by CLT, presents several questions. For one, what exactly does ‘natural use oflanguage’ refer to? Doesn’t language in the classroom represent the natural use of languageas well? Why is the focus on accuracy a bad thing in the English language classroom?Doesn’t a lack of understanding of form impede on meaningful communication? Clearly,CLT, in isolating accuracy concerns from fluency issues in the classroom, contributes towhat Firth refers to as ‘the contrived divide between language “learning” and “use” ’(Firth2009: 149).

Criticisms of CLT abound. These include observations that the approach discouragesthe use of the mother tongues in the classroom, which McKay (2002: 112) believes isa ‘tenet [that] ignores the productive ways in which the mother tongue can be used inclass, and is particularly inappropriate in an era when English is being acquired primar-ily in bilingual contexts.’ Teachers outside the Inner Circle countries (ICC) also find theapproach inapplicable to their situations. Mohammad (2012) describes misapprehensionsabout CLT among Bangladeshi teachers of English. These misapprehensions include be-liefs that the approach involves the exclusive focus on meaning, no exclusive focus onlearner errors, listening and speaking practice only, and avoidance of the learner’s mothertongue. (Mohammad 2012) CLT has also been questioned because of its ‘sort of naive



Figure 2. ELT practices of Filipino teachers of English

ethnocentricism prompted by the thought that what is good for Europe or the USA hadto be good for KwaZulu’ (Chick in Mahboob and Tilakaratna 2012: 10). McKay (2002:113–116) provides a discussion of serious challenges to CLT posed by teachers in China,Korea, Hungary, and Pakistan. These challenges include the beliefs that: (i) CLT doesnot seem to present serious learning activities; (ii) CLT is unable to respond to the needsof learners to pass traditional national grammar-based examinations; (iii) CLT does notwork in less-than-ideal educational systems with large classes and inadequate funding forteacher training; and (iv) CLT is burdensome to teachers who are expected to produceauthentic learning materials, especially in communities where English is not widely used.

When CLT was first introduced to Filipino teachers in the 1980s, it was largely misun-derstood and found to be pedagogically unclear. This may be attributed to the top-downfashion of presenting CLT to Filipino teachers of English (Valdez 2011: 74). Among Fil-ipino teachers today, there are different interpretations of the CLT approach to teachingEnglish. In a survey in which 76 private and public high school teachers of English weresurveyed in 2012, I conducted recently about ELT practices among private and publicschool teachers of English, I found that teachers who claimed to be practicing CLT alsoreported that they taught grammar explicitly to their students (Figure 2). When asked todescribe the features of CLT, the teachers reported practices, which are summarized inFigure 3.

Although the survey involves a small sample, the results illustrate that among Filipinoteachers of English, CLT is interpreted as having practices that the approach was not origi-nally intended to observe. For instance, the teachers did not seem to see grammar-focusedteaching as incompatible with CLT. In focused group discussion, some teachers reportedthat they allowed the use of the mother tongue during group activities and occasionallyintroduced grammar games in their lessons.



Figure 3. Features of CLT according to Filipino teachers of English

CLT remains as the most popular, almost the default, ELT framework in the Philippines.Lesson plans and textbooks continue to be written following the principles of CLT. Doplonwrites about a particular lesson in a textbook. She makes the following observation:

The communicative approach in the instructional materials does not seem to be contextualized in a propermultilingual environment [ . . . ] [T]he instructional materials reveal a belief in the monolingual fallacy:English language classes, although found within the Philippine setting, are really monolingual classeslocated in the Philippines. The interactions within such classes not only support the monolingual fallacy,but the maximum exposure fallacy as well (Doplon 2012: 148).

Doplon illustrates how the native speaker context is assumed in CLT in Philippine text-books. According to her:

The first grade is the entry level for the BEC. For many students, this may be one of their first encounterswith the English language. The lesson is aimed at mimicking real life situations where people greet oneanother. While the situations are life-like, the language of the situations neglect the first language of thechildren and their multilingual environment.

We might also notice the following script prescribed to engage the students:

Motivation Ask:How do we greet our parents? visitors? other people? What do we usually tell them? How do ourparents/visitors feel when we greet them? Do you feel the same way?The use of the personal pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’ assume that the students and the teacher live in acommunity where they speak English. Not only are they assumed to speak in English, they are assumedto be comfortable and familiar with the language as it is used for a very personal function such asgreeting. The use of the term ‘usually’ also assumes that the students commonly greet their parentsand visitors in English. However, that is far from the usual situation in the Philippines’ (Doplon 2012:123–124).



Clearly, the approaches that dominated and continue to dominate Philippine ELT, namely,English for Specific Purposes, Task-based Language Teaching, and Communicative Lan-guage Teaching, persist in their reliance on ‘native speaker’ norms. Such a situation, ifallowed to continue, will certainly create feelings of intimidation for the learners, lowself-esteem and lack of self-confidence. Dropout rates in the early years of schooling havebeen associated with the Filipino learners’ inability to understand their lessons and teachers(Nolasco 2008). And language has a lot to do with developing learners’ knowledge andunderstanding about things.

The ELT approaches offered by the WE and ELF paradigms open up several possibilitiesfor Philippine ELT to veer away from practices that promote ‘native speaker’ norms. Thetwo paradigms are located as opposites on the cline of the identity and communicationfunctions of the English language. While the WE approach to ELT foregrounds identityby promoting local varieties, ELT from the ELF perspective forwards the communicationfunction of the language by approaching learning and use as simultaneous processes.

In what specific ways may these two paradigms assist Filipino teachers of English intheir task of teaching the language? As there are clear benefits resulting from the promotionof local varieties of English, should Philippine English be used as the language model ofFilipino students? What are other options for Filipino teachers of English if PhilippineEnglish is not promoted as the norm of ELT in the country? These questions are addressedin the next section.

CONCLUSION

The introduction of the WE paradigm to Filipino scholars and teachers of English in the1990s presented an opportunity to finally resist the dominance of native speaker norms inthe classroom. However, with a surge in the popularity of Philippine English research, thevariety began to be promoted as the target of ELT. Clearly, there are benefits to using PEin Philippine ELT. For one, the variety is already being used by teachers of the language,whether they are aware of it or not. Thus, by promoting PE in the classroom, feelings ofintimidation, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence among both teachers and learnersmay diminish. And, as teachers know, lowering affective filters may result in an increaseof learning outcomes. However, I argue that, for all the benefits offered by the existenceof a Philippine variety of English, it may not be realistic and appropriate to use this varietyas the norm for ELT in the Philippines.

First of all, the absence of a comprehensive codification of the variety, grammar books,and other instructional materials makes it difficult to choose PE as a model in the Englishlanguage classroom. It is true that so much has already been written about PE and thatthe variety has reached ‘an age of maturity’ (Bolton 2011), but these research studies haveremained research studies with no clear and concrete applications to ELT. In addition,there are issues concerning the widespread acceptability of the PE variety. The variety hasalways been referred to as educated PE. Such label is recognition that PE is used only bythe elite few. Despite two decades of scholarly work that describe and promote the variety,questions arise on whether this discourse on PE presents the language as empowering toits users or as what Tupas (2004: 54) describes as ‘a reified sociolinguistic abstractionwhich does not have much to do with the lives of its speakers’. Tupas (2006: 169), inresponse to Filipino poet Gemino Abad et. al.’s (1997: 170) now famous line ‘English isours. We have colonized it too,’ asks, ‘But who are the “we” who have colonized English?’.



There are claims that PE should be taught because the variety, as all other Englishes areseen in the WE paradigm, is an indigenized, identity-marking variety that bears the uniqueculture of its speakers. But PE is not really significantly different from other varieties; it iscertainly not radically different from Standard American English (SAE). Still, if we acceptthe argument of PE as a mark of identity and culture, then the argument would apply onlyto the identity and culture of the educated class who use this variety. For the rest of theFilipinos, identity in languages means using the mother tongues, not a nativized variety ofa language that is still associated with the colonial past.

Finally, the Philippine educational system has been saddled with a wide range of prob-lems from teachers’ salaries, low achievement scores, lack of classrooms, limited acces-sibility to vital infrastructure (such as electricity and computers), to curriculum reform,teacher training, and instructional materials development (Martin 2005). And then thereis that ‘unresolved medium of instruction issue in Philippine basic education [that] isa recurring nightmare’ (Bautista et al. 2010: 34). With all these concerns, should ELTprofessionals even bother to worry about what variety of English should be taught in theclassroom?

If PE should not be taught as a model for Filipino learners of English, what then is thealternative? Certainly, the alternative should not be to revert to native speaker norms, whichis already the status quo. Instead, what I propose for ELT in the Philippines is a frameworkthat is more cognizant of the unique sociolinguistic profile of the Philippines. ELT stake-holders in the Philippines would do well to focus instead on the communicative function ofthe language in Kirkpatrick’s identity-communication continuum. Mahboob (2010) refersto this side of the continuum as the ‘uses’ side of his user-uses complementarity. Accordingto Mahboob (2010: 8):

Literature on world Englishes has traditionally focused on the “users” and looked at linguistic featuresand structures that can be used to identify them. The results of such a focus on “users” leads to a neglectof the “uses” of English within a world Englishes paradigm.

Mahboob pushes for an emphasis on ‘uses’ which are ‘socially constructed ways of makingmeaning in specific contexts so that people from different backgrounds can “communi-cate” efficiently and effectively’ (Mahboob 2010: 11). Kirkpatrick (2010) refers to thisfocus on teaching the communication function of English as the ‘multilingual model andlingua franca approach,’ which requires the presence of multilingual teachers as modelsfor the multilingual learners, using instructional materials drawn from various contexts,following a cross-cultural curriculum. Matsuda (2003: 723) more concretely recommendsthat learners be exposed to speakers of other varieties through face-to-face interaction,email exchanges, visiting websites that provide audio-visual samples of these varieties.For instructional materials, Matsuda (2003: 724) calls for the rewriting of textbooks toassign speakers from the OCE and ECE major roles in dialogues and stories.

It is also important for ELT in the Philippines to strive to make full use of all linguisticresources available to the learner. The Philippines has more than 175 languages. Thus, forELT in the Philippines to be relevant, appropriate, and successful, it must allow the use ofmother tongues in the classroom. Mother tongues are vital resources learners draw from inbridging from one language to another. Sadly, the English-only attitude and practice stillpersist in Philippine ELT, despite the move to institutionalize MTB-MLE in basic education.Other than the mother tongues, linguistic resources in the classroom also include PE andSAE. There can be no denying that SAE still occupies a prestige position in PhilippineC© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd


society. However, this status is not the fault of the language. SAE is certainly not an evilmonster that must be destroyed. The monster is not the language, but the attitude attachedit, which is the assignment of superiority to SAE at the expense of other languages. Thus,PE and SAE should both be used in Philippine ELT. Kirkpatrick (2007) talks about howsome scholars have recommended the use of a native speaker variety as norm, with thelocal variety as model. In such situations, learners will not be discouraged from usingwhatever variety they speak, but they should also aim to be clear and intelligible to others.This may mean downplaying some features, which impede communication. Thus, in theend, it is communication that learners of the language strive for.

In the final analysis, whatever ELT policy and practices are introduced, these will still beunsuccessful if teachers are not allowed to make their own decisions on the ground. Eachschool situation in the Philippines has a unique sociolinguistic profile. Because of this,languages-in-education decisions must be made as close as possible to the classroom. Oneconcrete application of school-based ELT management is allowing teachers to have a handin the preparation of instructional materials. In some ways, this is already being practicedby the public schools that have embraced the MTB-MLE. Rather than wait for books tobe printed and delivered from Manila, teachers in these schools create what they call ‘bigbooks’ from their and their students’ artwork. These teachers, who are fully immersedin the sociolinguistic realities of their schools, are in the best position to make importantdecisions to ensure the success of ELT in their classrooms.

APPENDIX

List of Department of Education (DepEd) Memoranda on English Language Teaching inthe Philippines

Communicative language teaching approachNo. 201 s.2009 Region-wide National English Proficiency Program (NEPP) Enhancement

Training of Mentors on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Assessment andIntervention for Grades I-III and Grades IV-VI Teachers/Mentors

No. 137 s.2009 Schedule of the Enhancement Training of Trainers (TOT) on Communica-tive Language Teaching (CLT), Assessment and Intervention for Grades I-III and GradesIV-VI Teachers

No. 107 s.2009 Enhancement Training of Trainers on Communicative Language Teaching(CLT), Assessment and Intervention for Grades I-III and for Grades IV-VI Teachers

No. 575 s.2008 Continuation of the Region-wide Conduct of the Training on Commu-nicative Language Teaching and Assisting Beginning Reading for Grades I-III Teach-ers/Mentors

No. 527 s.2008 Orientation of Regional Chiefs, Regional NEPP Coordinators and DivisionEnglish Supervisors in the Elementary Level on Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) and the Teaching of Reading to Support School-based Mentoring Program

No. 415 s.2008 Enhancement Training of Trainers of (TOT) and Region-wide Training onCommunicative Language Teaching and Assessing Beginning Reading for Grades I-IIITeachers/Mentors

No. 169 s.2008 National English Proficiency Program (NEPP) Phase II-Ten-Day Trainingof Trainers (TOT) on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and “Gabay” MentoringProgram for Grades IV-VI



No. 27 s.2007 RELCAAP National Seminar-Workshop on Updating Strategies in Com-municative Language Teaching: Support to School-based Management (SBM) Inset

No. 61 s.1987 Summer Workshop for Language Supervisors on Communicative LanguageTeaching for Intermediate and Advanced Students of English as a Second Language

English for specific purposesNo. 184 s.2000 International Seminar of “Language for Specific Purposes: Tuning to the

New Millennium”No. 69 s.1994 Summer Seminar-Workshop on Materials Development in English for

Specific Purposes (ESP)No. 7 s.1993 Second of a Series Lecture-Workshop on English for Specific PurposesNo. 87 s.1989 National Conference on English for Specific Purposes: State of the ArtNo. 64 s.1984 7TH National Seminar Workshop in English for Specific Purposes (ESP)No. 35 s.1983 Center for English for Specific Purposes (CESP) Seminar-WorkshopNo. 116 s.1982 Fifth National Seminar-Workshop on English for Specific Purposes: En-

glish in AgricultureNo. 32 s.1982 5th National Seminar-Workshop on English for Specific Purposes

Task-based language teaching approachNo. 237 s.1996 Corrigendum to DECS Memo No. 320, S. 1996 (Orientation Meeting of

the PELT Project SFDA)No. 220 s.1996 Orientation Meeting on the PELT Project School-based Follow-up Devel-

opment ActivityNo. 348 s.1995 Philippines English Language (PELT) Project

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(Received 13 June 2014)


English language teaching in the Philippines (2014)

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