ENCULTURATING GRADE SEVEN STUDENTS WITH CEBUANO

LITERATURE: LEARNING RESOURCE MATERIALS

FOR CONTEXTUALIZATION

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Subject

PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1

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 Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SCOPE

INTRODUCTION

Rationale of the Study

“The use of Cebuano Literature pierces through our souls. It connects the soul

and the emotions of the writer”. Studying Cebuano literature exposes you to the culture

of the people of the southern part of the Philippines. Studying the written language of

the Cebuano is one of the ways to preserve the language especially now that Tagalog

has been instituted as the lingua franca of the Philippines and English is used as a

language of choice for formal occasions (Vincent, 2011). The literature on the use of the

mother tongues or the first languages of learners has been overwhelmingly positive

(Tupas, 2012). However, this seemingly unproblematic fact about mother tongues

becomes a highly politicized argument fit is located in specific socio political contexts.

Indeed, the role of mother tongues in society and education depends on whose society

and education we are talking about.

Dr. Steve Walter (2015), one of the researchers who conducted the study of the

effect of language of instruction on educational outcomes presented the results of a

study evaluating the effectiveness of mother-tongue-first multilingual education in the

Central African nation of Cameroon. In the area in which the research was carried out,

the primary language spoken was Kom, but the language of instruction used in local

schools is English. Last 2007, SIL (one of the development partners who participated to

improve education for children in developing countries) presented an experimental

program where there are twelve schools were designated in order to provide a

classroom instruction in Kom (student’s first language) through Grade 3.

In contrast, assessments indicated that the students being studied and

compared, twelve English-medium schools are struggling to learn to read. In fact, the

results of the group test all the way through Grade 5 are so much similar to what one

would expect from random guessing. Walter emphasized that the distinction between

learning to read and learning a foreign language are different. He stated that, “Reading

is vastly easier to teach when the target language of reading instruction is one the

learner understands and speaks well”. Conversely, students who attend school in a

language that is foreign to them (often a second language for the teacher as well),

encounter great difficulty in mastering the basics of education while simultaneously

struggling to learn a foreign language.

Walter also noted that, the first three years of mother-tongue instruction are still

not enough in providing ongoing academic success, as based on the test scores of

students from Kom-medium schools decline quite dramatically once students enter

English-medium instruction in Grade 4. He proposed that students would be better

served by a model called “late-exit”, which continues mother- tongue instruction while

providing also more time in mastering English as a preparation for English-only

instruction.

The use of literature as a technique for teaching both basic language skills (i.e.

reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary, grammar

and pronunciation) has become very popular in the field of language learning and

teaching. Literature is used with English Foreign Language learners because it taps
what they know and who they are, and literature is a particularly inviting context for

learning both a second/foreign language and literacy. (Shang, 2006)

Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide a learning resource material for

contextualization of Cebuano Literature in Grade Seven Students. Moreover, it is for the

students to understand and appreciate Cebuano Literature through the instructional

material provided for them that is within the standards of the new curriculum. Tomlinson

(2012) explicated that materials can be informative (informing the learner about the

target language), instructional (guiding the learner in practicing the language),

experiential (providing the learner with experience of the language in use), eliciting

(encouraging the learner to use the language) and exploratory (helping the learner to

make discoveries about the language). As different learners learn in different ways

(Oxford 2002), the ideal materials aim to provide all these ways of acquiring a language

for the learners to experience and sometimes select from (Tomlinson 2012). According

to Fitzgerald (1993), literature can be the vehicle to improve learners’ overall language

skills. It can “expose students to a wide variety of styles and genres” (p.643). It is in

literature that "the resources of the language are most fully and skillfully used" (Sage,

1987, p. 6). Indeed, EFL (English Foreign Language) teachers should use the best

literature available as a model of masterful language usage. In other words, language

and literature cannot be separated. Teaching language in isolation from literature will

not move students toward mastery of the four language skills (Abulhaija, 1987).
Theoretical Background of the Study

It is the policy of the state that every graduate of basic education shall be an

empowered individual as stated in The Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013

otherwise known as the R.A 10533. In Section 10 of this law it contains The Basic

Education Curriculum Development. In this section it stated that the curriculum shall be

flexible enough to enable and allow schools to localize, indigenize and enhance the

same based on their respective educational and social contexts (deped.gov.ph). As

stated in DepEd Order No. 51 series of 2014 on Guidelines on the Conduct of Activities

and Use of Materials Involving Aspects of Indigenous Peoples Culture. Under the policy

background of this order is the localization and contextualization of curriculum content

and competencies to the social and educational context of communities being served

(deped.gov.ph).

One of the theories that anchored this study is the theory of Universal Grammar

by Noam Chomsky. This theory is an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories,

such as a noun category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language

development in children and overall language processing in adults. Instinctively children

know how to combine the two categories: the noun and the verb (lemetyinen, 2012).

Chomsky offered a number of pieces of evidence to support his theory. He posed that

language is fundamentally similar across all of humanity. For instance, every language

has something that is like a noun and a verb, and every language has the ability to

make things positive or negative. Chomsky also discovered that when children are

learning to speak, they don't make the errors you would expect. For instance, children
seem to understand that all sentences should have the structure 'subject-verb-object',

even before they are able to speak in full sentences (Diamond, 2017). In certain

situations in which the child is not presented with any consistent linguistic model, they

appear to have the capacity to invent some aspects of language (Ren Hulin, Xu Na,

2014). Originally, Chomsky puts forward language acquisition device to refer to the

innate mechanism of language learning. Chomsky believes that UG is special device of

human brain which can help people learn language quickly. It is an unconscious and

potential knowledge which exists in human brain without learning and determines the

existing appearance of human language. Chomsky uses UG to account for first

language learning (Ren Hulin, Xu Na, 2014). Essentially, UG approach is trying to

characterize what structures and processes the child brings to the task of first language

acquisition, drawing on the two central concepts of principles and parameters (Skehan,

2014).

Another theory that supports this study is the Linguistics Interdependence Theory

by James Cummings. This theory argues that first language (L1) knowledge can be

transferred positively during the second language (L2) acquisition process (Williams,

2014). Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic

Proficiency (CALP) are the two possible ways on how the students can acquire the

language these were proposed by Cummings himself (Bilash, 2009). However, the idea

of CALP can explain the language acquisition more effectively because it is the basis for

a child’s ability to cope with the academic demands placed upon him/her in the various

subjects (Baker, 2006). He also stated that, while many children develop native speaker

fluency within two years of immersion in the target language, it takes between 5-7 years
for a child to be working on a level with native speakers as far as academic language is

concerned. On the other hand, the theory of Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP)

another theory of Cummings, also explains why it becomes easier and easier to learn

additional languages (Bilash, 2009). As briefly stated by Cumming CUP explains that in

the course of learning one language a child acquires a set of skills and implicit

metalinguistic knowledge that can be drawn upon when working in learning or acquiring

another language. Cummings called this Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) as

knowledge and skills. CUP provides the base for the development of both the first

language (L1) and the second language (L2). It is very important that students be

encouraged to continue their native language development. The best ways that the

parents can do to help their child develop their first and second language when they

were at home is to give the child an opportunity to read extensively in her own

language. Another is that parents should make some time with their children every

evening to discuss about how their day were going, in the school using their native

language (Cummings, 2000).

Cummings states that "Conceptual knowledge developed in one language helps

to make input in the other language comprehensible." If the children already understand

some abstract concepts like, "justice" or "honesty" in their own language, all they have

to do is to acquire the label for these terms in their second language. They have a far

more difficult task, if they have to acquire both the label and the concept in their second

language (Bilash, 2009).

 However, in Michael Halliday’s theory of language as a social semiotic resource,

or a ‘meaning potential’ he described it as a process by which children gradually learn

how to mean. He believed that what a child can do during interactions with others has

meaning and meaning can be turned into speech, and language is learned when it is

relevant and functional (Over, 2012). Just as the infant can’t walk, but is learning how to

use his body, he cannot talk either at least not in the language of his mother tongue

(Smidt, 2013 ). He proposed a systemic theory of language that unites our earliest

meaningful utterances with those we enact as adults. Through his three part stage-

model, Halliday argued that humans develop language because we are creatures who

need to mean, and language, above all else, is our primary resource for meaning

(Barra, 2010). According to Halliday, as the child moves into the mother tongue, these

functions give way to the generalized “metafunctions” of language. In this process, in

between the two levels of the simple protolanguage system (the “expression” and

“content” pairing of the Saussure’s sign), an additional level of content is inserted.

Instead of one level of content, there are now two: lexicogrammar and semantics. The

“expression” plane also now consists of two levels: phonetics and phonology (Sagucio,

2013). This was because he saw language as being infinite, variable and dynamic

resource for making and sharing meaning being constructed and maintained through

interaction. He also suggests that acquiring language talks about something an

individual has either “has” or “lacks”. (Smidt, 2013 pp. 75). Learning one’s mother

tongue is learning the uses of language which is the meaning potential associated with

words. It is not the acquisition of linguistic structures (Troike,2012).

 Halliday saw language acquisition as an interplay between nature and nurture

(Bloor and Bloor, 2004), suggesting that the language acquisition process of a child and

the linguistic structures he/she masters reflect the functions required to serve his/her

life. Learning a language was thus ‘learning how to mean’ (Chong, 2011). Unlike

Chomsky, Halliday did not believe in a finite system of rules, and preferred a descriptive

approach of examining sentences as being appropriate or inappropriate to the

prescriptive approach of labelling them ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ (Eggins, 2004). In the

tradition of Malinowski, Whorf and Firth, he believed language is moulded by culture,

and the world is seen through the language we speak (Ericksen, 2001). Meanings are

determined by the texts’ relationship with the context of culture (genre) and the context

of situation (register) (Scwarthz, 2014), and the study of sentences should, therefore, be

inseparable from its social, cultural and situational contexts, and not done in isolation.

Furthermore, In Halliday’s theory on language acquisition, he believes that

language is learned. Grammar mirrors function and is mastered through experience. He

also believes that language only develops through experience of other people and the

world around us and mind exists separately from matter. Halliday’s language and the

mind obey the same laws as all other aspects of reality (Lowe, 2017).

Halliday’s work represents a competing viewpoint to the formalist approach

of Noam Chomsky. Halliday’s concern is with “naturally occurring language in actual

contexts of use” in a large typological range of languages whereas Chomsky is

concerned only with the formal properties of languages such as English, which he thinks

are indicative of the nature of what he calls Universal Grammar. While Chomsky’s

search for Universal Grammar could be considered an essentially platonic endeavor

(i.e. concerned with idealized forms), Halliday’s orientation to the study of natural

language has been compared to Darwin’s method (Barra, 2010).

Language is not a domain of human knowledge (except in the special context of

linguistics, where it becomes an object of scientific study); language is the essential

condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge

(Wallace, Hand and Prain, 2004). Although some protolanguage signs may be

imitations of adult words, the protolanguage is not yet mother tongue; he has referred to

it as “child tongue”. Hearing it, one could not yet tell what the mother tongue was going

to be. (Barra, 2010). The learners internalize the way the society uses their language to

represent meaning, as learners experience the wide variety of forms of and functions of

language. They are learning about the language as well.(Moll, 2003).

THE PROBLEM

Statement of the Problem

This study determined the enculturation of Cebuano Literature to the Grade 7

students at Benedicto College during the School Year 2017-2018 as basis for proposed

enhancement program.

Specifically, this sought to answer the following questions:

1. What is the respondents profile in terms of:

1.1 age;

1.2 gender;

1.3 socioeconomic status; and

 1.4 hobbies?

2. To what extent do the students appreciate the use of Cebuano Literature in

terms of:

2.1 Reading; and

2.2 mother tongue?

3. What are the problems encountered in reading Cebuano Literature in terms

of:

3.1 Terminologies;

3.2 Analysis; and

3.3 Comprehension?

4. What is the proposed learning resource material for contextualization

involving enculturation of Cebuano Literature?

Significance of the Study

The localization of the topic or lesson is very important so that the students can

relate to the topic. Enculturation is the process of teaching an individual the norms and

values of a culture through unconscious repetition. The totality of actions within a culture

establishes a context that sets the conditions for what is possible within the society. It

may lead students to have a wider knowledge about Cebuano Literature. Thus, this

study will benefit the following:

 The School Administrator. Benedicto College, together with other private and

public schools, will be aware on enculturating Cebuano Literature.

The Teachers. Through this study, the teachers/instructors will be more

concerned on how important Literature is, especially Cebuano Literature.

The Students. Through this study, students will give importance on Cebuano

Literature.

Future Researchers. This study will serve as a guide to other researchers who

have find common in this topic that would want to extend this study.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

To furnish better understanding of the concept in this research, the following

terms are being defined.

Analysis

It is how the respondents analyze the Cebuano Literature and how the

researchers analyze the results of the respondents’ answers.

Cebuano Literature

It refers to the body of oral and written literature of speakers of Cebuano, the

mother tongue of a quarter of the country’s population; and to the literary

works written in Cebuano, a language widely spoken in the southern Philippines. The

term is most often extended to cover the oral literary forms in both indigenous and
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colonial Philippines. The majority of Cebuano writers are from

the Visayas and Mindanao region.

Comprehension

It refers on how the respondents and researchers understand the cebuano

literature.

Contextualization

It is the act or process of putting information into context from the situation or

location in which the information was found; it also aids comprehension.

Enculturation

It is the process whereby both the researchers and the respondents learn their

group’s culture, through the cebuano literature. It refers also to the internalization of the

native culture including language.

Learning Resource Materials

These are those devices and procedures that help to make teaching and learning

more interesting, more stimulating, more reinforcing and more effective; also, these are
any tools that help teachers teach and students learn and this is the output of the

researchers.

Mother Tongue

It is the language which a person has grown up speaking from early childhood or

it is the first language that you learn when you are a baby, rather than

a language learned at school or as an adult.

Reading

It is the process of constructing meaning from written texts; a complex skill

requiring the coordination of a number of interrelated sources of information; the

process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among: first, the

reader's existing knowledge; second, the information suggested by the text being read;

and third, the context of the reading situation. It is also involves identifying the words in

print a process called word recognition.

Terminologies

It is the words or phrases that are used in some of the Cebuano Literature.