3 of 10 Filipinos could hardly speak English - SWS

The Social Weather Station (SWS) in its March 2006 survey said that only "Three out of 10 Filipinos could speak the English language fluently," GMA7's 24 Oras reported Tuesday. Comparing a 1994 SWS survey which reported that six out of ten Filipinos spoke English fluently, the 2006 SWS survey showed that the number of Filipinos who can speak fluent English have fallen to three. The survey also indicated the drop in English conversation from 74 percent who said that they can understand English 12 year ago to 65 percent at the present. The Department of Education attributed the decline in English proficiency to the teaching techniques of some teachers using the combination of the English and Tagalog languages in public schools. Education Secretary Fe Hidalgo explained that teachers usually speak in Tagalog once they run-out of English. In this case, students suffer most because they tend to become weak not only in English language proficiency but even in Tagalog as well. Hidalgo said that the education department has allotted more than half a billion pesos for the training of more than 37,000 public school teachers.-GMANews.TV