Study outlines benefits of learning through mother tongues
In October 2016, the summary of the final evaluation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (EMBLI) pilot program was delivered. Starting in 2012, this pilot program was aimed to test the interest in the use of non official national languages as instructional languages, at the beginning of Basic Education.
The overall objective of this evaluation was to compare the performance of the schools which follow the EMBLI program with the State's regular schools - those that use Tetum and Portuguese as the main languages of instruction. The first part of this summary shows the results by comparing two instruments designed to measure educational performance (cognitive). Almost at the end of the process, the same evaluation was extended to the schools of the CAFE (Learning and Educational Training Centres, resulting from the Portuguese cooperation), which, being bilingual - Portuguese and Tetum, give greater weight to the use of Portuguese Language during the school year.
Three experimental instructional languages were selected - the Fataluku in Lautém, the Galolen in Manatuto and the Baikeno in Oe-Cusse. Two pre-schools and two Primary schools were chosen in each Municipality, based on a consultation process with the local authorities and the children’s parents. Teaching materials were also developed and teacher training was started.
In Timor-Leste, leaders have been working on language teaching issues for over 5 years. The result was the launch of this experimental pilot project in 2012, based on the children’s mother tongue, to test the feasibility of using non official national languages as the languages of instruction, at the beginning of basic education.
Continuous classroom assessment was made to all the children in Grade Two from the schools included in the test. A random sampling method was used to select children in pre-school and in Grade One and Two from the schools of this project, in order to participate in the assessment of early reading level.
The assessment work was carried out by teams of two people, one from the project and another from the Ministry of Education; individuals from partner organizations helped on a one-off basis.
The executive summary presents very satisfactory results in terms of the methodology applied in this project. The promoters undertake to provide, in the near future, the full presentation of the data which formed the basis of this work.
