First Language (L1) Vocabulary Acquisition of Grade 1 English-Speaking Cebuano Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48017/dj.v11i3.3627Keywords:
Elementary Education - Initial Years, English Language Education, educational performanceAbstract
English is the medium of instruction in school as early as in Grades 1 to Grade 3 in some private schools.
Some students have English as their second language (L2), especially those graders who are taught Mother
Tongue – Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in public school, while some students even if they are
non-native speakers use English as their first language (L1). In Cebu, there are students who are non-native
speakers of English but English is still their first language (L1). This phenomenon paved this paper to
investigate the L1 performance of English-speaking Grade 1 Cebuano students. Vocabulary is vital to the
process of learning English because if learners lack enough vocabulary it would be difficult for them to express
their ideas and understand other people. Thus, this study focused on the L1 Vocabulary Performance of
Grade 1 English-speaking Cebuano Students. Through descriptive quantitative design, this study identified
the vocabulary performance of three (3) Grade 1 students in a private school in Cebu City. To identify their
vocabulary performance, the vocabulary exercises in their class work were used. The findings revealed the
following conclusions. English-speaking Cebuano students performed well in their English vocabulary
classwork based on their high percentage scores. The students have a good vocabulary performance in
their first language (L1) which is evident from the consistently good scores in the vocabulary tasks from
the first grading period to the second grading period. The findings also rejected the assumption that the
Grade 1 students will have low performance in their English vocabulary classwork being non-native
English speakers.
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