Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) Initiatives in Region 8

With the implementation of Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) under the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, this study set out to examine Region 8’s readiness and extant educational materials.  On the one hand, “L1 to L2 Bridge Instruction” has been shown by Hovens (2002) to engender the most substantive language acquisition, while the “Pure L2 immersion” approach displays the lowest results. Despite this, Region 8 (like other non-Tagalog speaking Regions) lacks primary texts in the mother tongue, vocabulary lists, grammar lessons and, more fundamentally, the references needed for educators to create these materials. To fill this void, the researchers created a 377,930-word language corpus generated from 419 distinct Waray texts, which led to frequency word lists, a five-language classified dictionary, a 1,000-word reference dictionary with pioneering part-of-speech tagging, and software for determining the grade level of Waray texts. These outputs are intended to be “best practices” models for other Regions. Accordingly, the researchers also created open-source, customizable software for compiling and grade-leveling texts, analyzing the grammatical nuances of each local language, and producing vocabulary lists and other materials for the Grade 1-3 classroom.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v3i1.586

Validation Study of Waray Text Readability Instrument

In 2012 the Leyte Normal University developed a computer software—modelled after the Spache Readability Formula (1953) made for English—made to help rank texts that can is used by teachers or research groups on selecting appropriate reading materials to support the DepEd’s MTB-MLE program in Region VIII, in the Philippines. However, “several experiments have already established that existing readability measures in English cannot directly be used to compute readability of other languages.” To validate the Waray Text Readability Instrument (WTRI) formula, 15 stories were rated by 24 randomly selected teachers from two elementary schools in Tacloban City. The WTRI software uses two factors in determining readability, namely: (a) sentence length and (b) frequency of commonly occurring words. The teachers’ task is to read the given text and rate the grade level of each text by considering these three factors: (1) frequency of commonly used words; (2) sentence length; and, (3) total number of words. The data gathered was compared with the WTRI’s ratings of the same texts. Statistical testing was done to determine if there is a significant difference between the teachers’ rating of the texts and the WTRI’s ratings. As a result, there was no significant difference between the software’s grade level ratings and that of the teachers’. It implied that the WTRI’s calculation is valid

Format of Options in a Multiple Choice Test Vis-a-Vis Test Performance

Testing or evaluation in an educational context is primarily used to measure or evaluate and authenticate the academic readiness, learning advancement, acquisition of skills, or instructional needs of learners. This study tried to determine whether the varied combinations of arrangements of options and letter cases in a Multiple-Choice Test (MCT) affect the test performance of the homogenous BEED students. A test was designed and administered to test the performance across test items employing different arrangement of options (Cascading, Inverted N, Z eye movement, and One-line Horizontal) and across case of letter options (upper and lower case), that is, a total of eight (8) treatments. The statistical analyses revealed that there is an insignificant difference in the mean performance of students in relation to letter cases and arrangement of letter choices in a multiple choice test. Thus, the test performance of students in a multiple choice type of test does not depend on either letter cases or arrangement of letter choices