THE previous columns on the Department of Education’s Special Foreign Language Program (SFLP) highlighted the main features of the languages program in Spanish, Japanese and German. We described the concrete efforts, which the respective foreign embassies and their cultural institutes dispensed to maintain a vigorous implementation of foreign language education in select public secondary schools. We also made reference to the fact that the teaching of a foreign language in the SFLP is aimed to develop students’ fundamental communication skills in a foreign language apart from English “to prepare them for meaningful interaction in a linguistically diverse global workplace.” As a subject, SFLP replaced the Career Pathways Technology Livelihood (CPTLE ) in the junior and senior high school curriculum. SFLP gives equal importance to exposing both teachers and students to the culture, which embeds the language. The SPFL Schools, which qualify to implement the SFLP, are provided funding for materials and training for teachers.

For this week, we look into the SFLP–French. Together with Spanish and Japanese, French was one of first three foreign languages that saw the light of day in SY 2009-10 as DepEd’s initiative for globalization and internationalization of Filipino students. With SFLP-French, the DepEd signed with the French Embassy a Memorandum of Agreement for the establishment of a pilot program for the teaching of French in various public high schools in Metro Manila. During the MOA signing held at the French embassy in Makati City, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said, “We need to expand this program…Every Filipino student must learn a second foreign language aside from English.” The program trained 19 teachers from Metro Manila and Cebu, most of them receiving intensive language training in France where they lived in complete immersion with French families.” Since then, French as an optional language, has been introduced to 13 science high schools in the National Capital Region and in Region 7. (https://www.ambafrance-ph.org/Signing-French embassy’s cultural counsellor Christian Merer of-new-MOA-with-the)

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