Several language communities work together to prepare materials for teachers.( Liberia) © Liberian Translation and Literacy Organization, Liberia
Successful MTB MLE programmes also require cooperation between MT speakers and people from outside the language community. Cooperation is especially important for developing or revising the MT alphabet, recruiting and training teachers and other staff, supervising classes, conducting and documenting preliminary research and evaluating programme components.
Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
Establishing relationships with government agencies and NGOs is an important strategy but it is not always easy for people in local communities to reach“ up” to district, provincial and national officials to ask for their help. Three of the programmes in the Case Study book in this MTB MLE Resource Kit describe the way that language communities developed MTB MLE programmes outside the formal education system. In all three cases, community members worked with partners from outside the community. In each case, the programmes have been successful in helping students move from the MTB MLE programme into the formal education system.
Q4
What do people within and outside minority language communities say about MTB MLE?
A teacher in the Regional Lingua Franca Programme in the Philippines compared her MTB MLE students with the students she had taught in Filipino and English:
Before, the children just sat in class but they didn’ t say anything. They didn’ t even know how to answer the teacher’ s questions. Now they always have their hands up! They have so much to say. Now this is an active, excited group of children.
Supervisors report that teachers are happy because their students are learning the official school language so well. This is what a supervisor said about the Hmong MTB MLE programme in Thailand:
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