Ma. Lourdes Guillermo Tayao is Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award

Ma. Lourdes Guillermo Tayao is a teacher, writer, and editor. She has been writing English textbooks in language and reading from 1963 to the present. She is a board member of the Philippine Association for Language Teaching Inc. and a member of the Reading Association of the Philippines and the Training Committee Fund for Upgrading the Standard of Education.

Despite more lucrative opportunities, Tayao chose to be part of the public school system in her many years of service. She started as a classroom teacher and eventually became a supervisor under the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) in Manila. Her DECS service continued way past her retirement from teaching. She helped develop English modules for both primary and secondary levels, working as team leader and editor. It was only the pandemic in 2020 that put a stop to this endeavor.

Her researches and publications include The Evolving Phonology of Philippine English; Book Review of Roger Thompson’s Filipino English and Taglish: Language Switching from Multiple Perspectives in Asian Englishes; Construction and Validation of Test Items for the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Bridging Program Project; and A Lectal Description of the Phonological Features of Philippine English, which she edited with Kingsley Bolton for the Hong Kong University Press.

In 2005, she became a holder of the Bonifacio Sibayan Distinguished Professorial Chair in Applied Linguistics. An ongoing project of hers is the Fund for the Upgrading of the Standard of Education (FUSE) IT Modules on the Teaching of Reading.

‍