Travails of Bangsamoro Learners on Multilingualism: A Phenomenology

This phenomenological study describes the struggles and coping mechanisms in Multilingual learning among the learners in Hadji Ali Baganian Memorial School Inc. It utilized the method described by Colaizzi (1978) to analyze data, including familiarization, identifying significant statements, formulating meanings, clustering themes, developing a detailed description, producing the fundamental structure, and verifying the fundamental structure. The participants were the ten purposively selected Grade 9 students at the said school who performed average to outstanding levels in their respective classes. This school has provided Bangsamoro learners educational perspectives both in the private Madaris and the DepEd curriculum. The findings revealed that the participants encountered difficulties with multilingualism. The difficulties include negative attitude and complexity of the rules in phonology, a poor background of students in word stratification in morphology, poor sentence construction due to the complexity of rules in syntax, and word recognition and correct usage in semantics. Five coping mechanisms were identified to address these difficulties. These were oral practicing, using a dictionary, tutorial, listening attentively, taking notes, and internet surfing. These identified coping mechanisms were summarized into one emergent theme – intrinsic motivation. The researchers concluded that language users and language learners need to know their language needs, background, progress in acquiring the target language, and capability to use it.