Language shift from English to mother tongue: Exploring language attitude and willingness to teach among pre-service teachers

© 2018 TESOL International Journal. Language-in-education policy becomes a recent tendentious concern in the context of the Philippines as it has recently adopted the Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Moreover, Baker (1992) claimed that language attitude is a main and vital component of policy and planning. Therefore, this research primarily purposes to determine the language attitude of the respondents and their willingness to teach in the Mother Tongue (MT) as substitute of English as medium of instruction (MoI) in the early stages of education. The study utilized an adapted questionnaire and surveyed 120 would-be mother tongue teachers. The results show that the respondents exhibit an attitude described as slightly positive . Furthermore, the respondents were determined to be willing to teach in the MT. Interestingly, there is significant relationship found between the language attitude and willingness to teach in the MT among the respondents. However, contrary to existing trend relative to gender difference on language attitude, the data discounts gender as a factor influencing language attitude and willingness to teach in the MT