Panay News

Making English speaking campaigns work

- By Dolly Arroyo Cabuquid, Teacher III Yating NHS, Dulangan, Pilar, Capiz

SCHOOLS do a campaign with an emphasis on the use of the English language when students are inside the campus, except if the subject the student is taking requires the use of the Filipino language, to help make them more comfortabl­e with thinking and communicat­ing in English as well as to improve their proficienc­y in using the English language to communicat­e.

With implementi­ng the English speaking campaign comes the trouble of a few or some students not being on the same page when it comes to using the English language to communicat­e because there are some who only communicat­e by using the Englishlan­guage if they feel they are about to get caught or if they get caught and they would go back to using the dialect when nobody is around to remind them to stick with using the English language.

To solve this problem, everybody who works for the school, or the teachers at the very least, should participat­e in the campaign themselves because if they see and hear that the teachers and the officials communicat­e through using the English language, they will realize that the campaign is being taken seriously by the people who implement it and they will also have to take it seriously. Speak in English if the person is speaking to you in the dialect and resort to pretending that you do not understand what the person is saying if he or she speaks in the dialect which is followed by you telling that person to speak in English.

We should also penalize those who poke fun and laugh at the people who try their hardest to communicat­e in English and have plenty of room to grow because those who exert more effort and have yet to reap the result of their dedication need to be given support rather than another reason to lose faith in themselves. There was a time that I saw a student being teased for trying to communicat­e in English and told me that it was the reason behind him feeling discourage­d.

What I realized is that it really takes a consistent and communal effort to make the campaign on communicat­ing in English in school work. When there is dedication for the campaign, punishment­s would become obsolete and the emphasis leans towards learning new things instead. The three Cs of the English speaking campaign should be community, consistenc­y, and culture. (

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