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Oxford English Dictionary editor tells fellow Pinoys: Being multilingual won't hinder English language learning

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MANILA -- Filipinos can still be proficient in English without having to lose the other languages they grew up with, according to an expert.Dr. Danica Salazar, world English editor for the Oxford English Dictionary, encouraged her fellow Filipinos to embrace being multilingual in a recent webinar organized by the Philippine Embassy in Spain.She stressed that there is nothing wrong with code switching or language alternation, and knowing how to speak Filipino or any other dialect will not hinder their learning of English.&quot;The things that we do like code switching, these are normal. We shouldn&#x27;t [be like], &#x27;Oh, it&#x27;s threatening the purity of the language&#x27; or whatever, that code switching is bad. We do these things because we are multilingual people,&quot; she said.&quot;Filipinos usually grow up speaking two, three, even four languages, and why is that a bad thing?&quot; she continued. &quot;Speaking more than one language can only help and will never hinder your acquisition of English.&quot;&quot;Being multilingual enriches us, so we should embrace it,&quot; she added.Salazar went on to point out that being a native speaker of English does not have anything to do with learning skills such as writing an academic paper or acing a job interview, saying that these are things that are acquired through formal education. &quot;Just because you&#x27;re born in America it doesn&#x27;t mean you are born with the capacity to do a brilliant job interview or write an article that can be published in an academic journal or a newspaper. All of those things, you learn that. Those are linguistic skills, but they are acquired,&quot; she explained. &quot;So being a native, or non-native, or secondary speaker of English doesn&#x27;t have anything to do with that,&quot; she added. &quot;If we want to be effective users of English, we have to teach them how to do these things in English. So take away that obsession of you having to speak English all the time.&quot; Salazar then proved her point by citing her own experience in learning the Spanish language: &quot;I was able to write my undergraduate thesis in Spanish after four years of studying when the only time I ever spoke Spanish was in the classroom. So, it is possible.&quot;<div>MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION </div>During the webinar, Salazar acknowledged that there are suggestions to once again make English the sole medium of instruction in the Philippines so students will improve their proficiency in the language.But she found it problematic, and maintained that the solution is &quot;to find effective ways to ensure that we are harnessing the multilingualism of our students.&quot;&quot;Making English as a medium of instruction will not help. Obsessing over minor points of grammar in the classroom will not help,&quot; she said. &quot;We need to kind of decolonize our way of thinking towards languages and find a way of bridging languages into the classroom in a way that puts effective communication above just rote learning,&quot; she continued. &quot;We have to reexamine our materials, our curricula, and our teaching methods to find a way that works for us, because this is the only way that we can really own English, Filipino, and any of our other languages.&quot; Salazar hopes that more discussions will be made on learning languages in the Philippines, saying these will bring the country a step closer to finding solutions to these problems. &quot;I can&#x27;t say I know all of the answers. I&#x27;m just identifying the problems and hope that talking more to people interested in these issues will help find a solution,&quot; she said. Watch Salazar talking about embracing multilingualism in the video below, starting at the 1:07:41 mark: <script src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&amp;version=v2.5" async="" type="text/javascript"></script><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/PHinSpain/videos/2107568266053259" data-width="auto"> </div>

"Speaking more than one language can only help and will never hinder your acquisition of English."

"Speaking more than one language can only help and will never hinder your acquisition of English."