Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: 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.
Source: Diversitas Journal
Author: Jeson Bustamante
Institution: Cebu Normal University
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7204480957