The Philippines and the English Language

The Philippines is markedly different from the other countries in Asia in terms of language. Its native languages use the Latin alphabet and English is taught in the early years of elementary education. It is also used as a medium of instruction in some schools especially in private elite colleges. Amy Chavez of The Japan Times noted in an article early this year how impressed she was with how fluent Filipinos are in English:

Above copied from Huffington Post

Unfortunately, Chavez, in the above article, is misusing test data. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) specifically mentions in its research reports not to use scores to rank countries:

Above copied from Test and Score Data Summary for TOEFL iBT Tests

First, it is important to take note of who takes the TOEFL test. These are students whose native language is not English. The TOEFL test is used for admission in high schools, colleges, and graduate schools in the United States, as well as licensing and immigration purposes. The fee to take the exam is not trivial. It is US$200, which is about half of a public school teacher's monthly salary. Thus, with the above in mind, those who took the TOEFL test are not representative of the country. In fact, these are mostly students who are applying for admission to a graduate school in the United States. These are college graduates who would like to pursue a doctorate degree. In the Department of Chemistry of Georgetown University, for instance, a score of 100 in TOEFL iBT is required to receive a teaching fellowship. Thus, it is very likely that TOEFL test takers from the Philippines are either among the brightest students or children from wealthy families in the country.

The data from the latest year is now available:

Test takers are given the following choices to pick for their native tongue:

Included in the above list are the Philippine languages: Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Iloko and Tagalog. There is no Filipino in the list as everyone knows that Filipino is really a dialect of Tagalog.

The following are the mean scores (using the native language of the test taker as classification):

Native Language	Reading	Listening	Speaking	Writing	Total
Dutch	24	26	26	24	100
Konkani	24	25	25	25	99
Luxembourgish	24	25	25	25	99
Danish	23	25	26	24	98
Kashmiri	24	24	24	25	98
German	23	25	25	24	97
Malayalam	24	24	25	24	97
Assamese	24	24	24	25	96
Slovenian	23	25	24	24	96
Finnish	23	25	24	24	95
Galician	24	25	23	23	95
Hindi	23	24	24	24	95
Icelandic	22	25	24	23	95
Oriya	23	24	24	24	95
Tamil	23	24	24	24	95
Hebrew	22	25	24	22	94
Norwegian	21	24	25	23	94
Sindhi	22	23	24	24	94
Swedish	21	25	25	23	94
Estonian	22	24	24	23	93
Kannada	22	23	24	24	93
Marathi	22	23	23	24	93
Basque	24	24	22	23	92
Catalan	23	24	22	23	92
Hungarian	22	24	23	23	92
Bengali	22	23	23	23	91
Croatian	22	24	23	22	91
Czech	22	24	23	23	91
Greek	22	23	22	24	91
Italian	24	23	22	22	91
Latvian	21	23	24	23	90
Polish	22	23	23	22	90
Romanian	21	23	23	23	90
Slovak	21	23	23	23	90
Urdu	21	22	24	23	90
Bulgarian	21	23	22	22	89
Punjabi	21	22	24	22	89
Shona	20	22	24	23	89
Tagalog	21	22	24	23	89
Cebuano	20	21	24	22	88
Malay	21	22	21	23	88
Belarusian	21	22	22	21	87
Bikol	20	21	23	23	87
Iloko	20	21	22	22	87
Macedonian	20	22	23	22	87
French	21	22	22	22	86
Gujarati	20	21	23	22	86
Hiligaynon	20	20	24	23	86
Lithuanian	19	22	23	22	86
Serbian	20	22	23	21	86
Korean	22	21	21	22	85
Sinhalese	20	21	22	22	85
Spanish	21	22	22	21	85
Tatar	21	22	21	21	85
Bosnian	19	22	22	21	84
Russian	20	21	22	21	84
Zulu	16	20	25	22	84
Ga	19	20	21	22	83
Kikuyu	19	21	22	22	83
Nepali	20	20	21	21	83
Portuguese	21	21	20	20	83
Telugu	19	20	22	21	83
Farsi	20	20	21	21	82
Georgian	19	21	22	21	82
Indonesian	20	21	20	21	82
Ukrainian	19	21	22	20	82
Luo	18	19	22	21	80
Malagasy	19	19	21	21	80
Albanian	18	19	22	20	79
Efik	18	19	22	20	79
Ganda	18	18	23	21	79
Igbo	18	19	21	21	79
Swahili	18	19	22	21	79
Tibetan	18	19	21	21	79
Yoruba	19	19	21	21	79
Burmese	18	19	20	21	78
Chinese	20	18	19	20	78
Tigrinya	19	19	21	20	78
Twi	17	19	21	21	78
Vietnamese	19	19	19	21	78
Afrikaans	18	18	20	20	77
Akan	18	18	20	21	77
Armenian	18	19	21	20	77
Azerbaijani	18	19	20	20	77
Bemba	16	18	23	21	77
Pushtu	17	18	22	20	77
Kazakh	17	19	21	19	76
Kosraean	20	19	19	19	76
Thai	18	19	19	20	76
Turkish	18	19	19	20	76
Amharic	17	19	21	18	75
Somali	17	18	21	19	75
Chichewa	17	18	20	19	74
Ewe	17	17	20	19	74
Oromo	17	18	20	19	74
Uzbek	17	18	20	19	74
Berber	16	19	20	18	73
Uighur	18	18	19	18	73
Hausa	16	17	20	19	72
Kinyarwanda	15	17	20	19	71
Mongolian	16	18	19	18	71
Arabic	15	18	20	17	70
Japanese	18	17	17	18	70
Lao	15	16	21	19	70
Turkmen	16	17	20	18	70
Khmer	15	16	19	19	69
Lingala	16	16	19	18	69
Tajik	14	16	20	17	68
Wolof	14	16	19	17	66
Fulah	14	14	20	17	65
Mandingo	14	14	19	18	65
Javanese	17	15	16	17	64
Bambara	13	13	17	16	59
Mossi	14	13	16	16	59
Kurdish	12	13	17	15	56

The 2013 data are not really different from the 2010 data that Amy Chavez cited. Singapore continues to have an average score of 98. India has 91 while Pakistan has 90. Both Philippines and Malaysia score an average of 89. Again, these are average scores for each country. These should not be used for ranking. These numbers canot be used for comparison between countries.

It will be at least a decade before the effects of the new K+12 curriculum in the Philippines are seen in these TOEFL scores. Aside from children living in Manila, its suburbs, and nearby provinces, students in elementary schools are now studying three languages simultaneously. The imposition of a national language in Philippine schools adds considerable load to students whose native tongue is not Tagalog. There is obviously nothing wrong with aspiring to be multilingual. However, fluency in a language for academic purposes requires focus or concentration. We could only hope that TOEFL scores in 2028 (four years after the first class of students who have gone through the full K+12 curriculum) from students in the Philippines are not going to be much worse than the 2013 scores. That is 14 years from now. That is why it is really important that we are in fact doing what is right.