Together with the 2010 and 2017 Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Memoranda on Foreign Languages (FL), which created guidelines for teaching foreign languages in higher education, there is a need to assess the potentials and pitfalls of introducing foreign languages in addition to English in the country's educational landscape. Citing Coulma's decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo emphasizes that the treatment of language is rooted in the history of assumptions about the monolingual, monocultural speaking subject. However, a subtle but important contextual difference between the teaching of foreign languages and English in the country is precisely the idea of "acquisition".
Despite existing in the same power grids as some SPFL languages (including French, Japanese, German and Mandarin),3 the contested role of English for linguistic expression and identity in the country makes it inseparable from questions of self. We therefore suggest the need for decolonization initiatives in the field of foreign language teaching. This economic strategy of assuming the role of a feeder country for the world market was better achieved through the introduction of foreign languages (FL) in the Philippines.
Teacher training activities include offering face-to-face and distance courses on the language and teaching methods in the partner institutions. Current data on the SPFL shows that the program is implemented in 16 out of 17 regions in the Philippines. In contrast, all foreign language teaching to the public at Western Visayas State University is centralized under their Center for Foreign Languages.
Another aspect of SPFL policy that should be challenged is the dual role of English in the SPFL classroom: to serve as a medium of instruction and as a prerequisite knowledge for teachers and students (through National Secondary Assessment Test results).
THE COLONIALITY OF FL MATERIALS AND THEIR USAGE
On a practical level, this can be illustrated through the issue of one of the FL textbooks (Nuovo Espresso 1)9 currently used at the Department of European Languages10 at the University of the Philippines, Diliman in the teaching of elementary (A1 level) Italian . Following some of the textbook's suggested classroom activities and exercises, one of the researchers,11 who teaches Italian at the Department of European Languages, encountered some difficulties in connecting the presented topics or activities to the students. Using a bingo activity from the chapter on vacations ("Andiamo in vacanza!"), students were tasked with going around and asking their classmates if they did any of the leisure activities listed on the bingo sheets.
Although far from the propagandistic content of colonial language teaching materials in the Philippines, textbook examples such as the above illustrate how teaching materials that are unreflexively appropriated can promote fragmentation (see Lugones 1994)12 and can be ill-suited as an interstitial space of intercultural encounters. However, years of punitive English-only policies in the Philippines have shown that despite the constant evolution of Philippine English, the ubiquitous creative language blends like Taglish, and pervasive multilingualism, monolingual pedagogy has emerged as the highest normative standard of "language "-education in the country.14 This does not come as a surprise given that code-switching as well as bilingual and multilingual experiments are something people engage in as an art of resistance, an affirmation of being active subjects who are not concerned with the logic of control or purity (Lugones 1994). This dependence on the center communities or the acceptance of "Western superiority" makes itself known in the process of developing the SPFL curriculum guides, where CEFR15 was also used in the Asian language programs due to the lack of other viable frameworks (Agcaoili et al. 2019).
Moreover, there are many reservations about teacher training programs in secondary education, precisely because they can further sharpen the existing hierarchical dynamics, as is apparent from the case of SPFL French teachers (Cao, in preparation)16. Therefore, the decolonization of VT materials depends on the recognition and resolution of these problems by the VT teacher to (.. strengthen the role of the native speaker) and the inclusion of the educator's familiarity with cultural contexts. Since decoloniality is a process of liberation, we need to rethink these limiting encounters in the Philippine context.
Proposed solutions to these issues may be as follows: First, educators challenge the monolingual habitus by acting as transcreators in the classroom instead of mere translators, thereby imbuing foreign language teaching materials with local meaning and encouraging the idea that there is more than one . way of seeing things. For this reason, associations of FL teachers in the Philippines can be created to share best practices and self-reflective activities and materials, thereby reducing dependence on foreign cultural institutions. Although several FL materials are already available online, central repositories or websites specifically for educators in the Philippines or the immediate region could be developed for the SPFL and higher education.
For example, they can highlight different concepts relevant to the reality of the target learners (such as migration,. By becoming aware and self-reflexive of the limitations caused by structural and planning issues in FL teaching in the Philippines, educators develop a self-awareness that enables the deconstruction, redefinition and reimagining of the current reality by breaking away from dependence on foreign cultural institutes and their materials or books.In light of this, it becomes crucial to consider the role of local educators and students recognize and validate in the production and formation of FL materials and practices in the Philippines that will encourage authentic and meaningful dialogue, enabling true intercultural and transcultural learning.
TRANSLANGUAGING AND OTHER DECOLONIAL PRACTICES IN THE FL
The mandatory presence of the mother tongue therefore decentralizes the monopoly of the target FL and strengthens all the languages present in the classroom. It is a step towards bringing education back to serving the nation and countering the commodification of people in the service of the global labor market. What are the challenges that deter the full articulation of a decolonial framework in the FL classroom.
Similarly, the University of the Philippines' Department of European Languages primarily aims to develop contributors to. In the industrialized Western world, the phenomenon of nationality is often perceived as a monadic archetype—. As introduced in the fourth section, the most obvious problem that the monolingual habitus persists in the FL classroom is the systemic downplaying of the Filipino student's multilingualism.
Again, this is rooted in the perceived homogenization of FL learners, which promotes the monolingual habitus, alongside its idealization of the monolingual native speaker. One major point of contention raised in the third section is the cultural appropriateness of the teaching materials available to FL teachers in the Philippines. This roundtable discussion focused on the possibilities of decolonial perspectives in foreign language pedagogy and policies in the Philippines.
Multilingualism and the New Economy.” In The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism, edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge, and Angela Creese, 369–83. The 'monolingual habitus' as a common feature in majority language teaching in different countries.” Per Linguam. English Language Content in the Philippines: A Case Study of Cultural and Linguistic Emancipation.
Between Globalization and Decolonization: Foreign Languages in the Crossfire.” In Decolonizing Foreign Language Education: The Misteaching of English and Other Colonial Languages, edited by Donald Macedo, 50–72. In The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education, edited by Stephen May, 167–90. Embracing English and Filipino Language Politics.” In The Politics of English: South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific, edited by Lionel Wee, Robbie B.H.
Neoliberal Restructuring of Education in the Philippines: Dependency, Labor, Privatization, Critical Pedagogy, and the K to 12 System. Asia Pacific Social Science Review. History, Language Planners, and Forgetting Strategies: The Consciousness Problem in the Philippines. Language problems and language planning 27, no.
