THE 2012 AND 2014 COMPETENCE-BASED EFL CURRICULA IN CAMEROON SECONDARY EDUCATION: THE PRONUNCIATION COMPONENT

THE 2012 AND 2014 COMPETENCE-BASED EFL CURRICULA IN CAMEROON SECONDARY EDUCATION: THE PRONUNCIATION COMPONENT

Emmanuel Nforbi (PhD) & Martin Bolivar Siéwoué

Dschang University, Cameroon

ABSTRACT

The competence based approach with entry through real – life situations has brought in much change in the training of the Cameroonian secondary school child. This training now equips them with holistic knowledge on how to perform skilfully in real social problem-solving. The first curriculum was introduced in 2012 and tried for two years, and a second curriculum was released in 2014, with palliatives for a number of difficulties recorded in the field. But a main concern remains. Many learners consider that it is God who endows with English language proficiency, because some have tried and not been able to cope with spoken English, and others have just developed the misconception. To what extent does the enhanced curriculum work for the deconstruction of this stereotype?

Key words: EFL – Curriculum – Pronunciation – Content analysis – Secondary school – Innovations.

RÉSUMÉ

L'approche Par les Compétences avec entrée par les Situations Réelles de Vie (APC-SRV) a apporté beaucoup de changements dans la formation de l'enfant camerounais du secondaire. Cette formation les équipe maintenant avec une connaissance holistique sur la façon de réagir face aux situations où des problèmes sociaux doivent être résolus. Le premier programme d'étude a été introduit dans le secondaire en 2012 et a été testé pendant deux années, et un deuxième programme d'étude a été introduit en 2014, avec des palliatifs pour un certain nombre de difficultés enregistrées sur le terrain. Mais un souci majeur demeure. Beaucoup d'apprenants pensent que c'est Dieu qui donne l''anglais, parce que certains d'entre eux ont essayé et n'ont pas pu parler ou écouter l'anglais, et d'autres épousent simplement cette conception erronée sans avoir fourni un effort quelconque. Jusqu'où est-ce le programme d'étude révisé œuvre-t-il pour la déconstruction de ce stéréotype, pour ce qui est des compétences orales ?

Mots clés: Anglais langue étrangère – Curriculum – Prononciation – Analyse de contenu – secondaire – Innovations.

INTRODUCTION

English is a living language, taught and learnt over the world for real-life communication, and it has earned global prominence. EFL teaching in Cameroon secondary school seems to have trained the French-speaking students’ visual memory only, in reading and writing, which visual memory in turn could have just been the result of similarities between French – their main language of instruction, and English, a subject on the curriculum – alphabet, word resemblance, etc. (for cross linguistic similarities and their importance, see Ringbom and Jarvis (2011)). The listening skill has been extremely deficient (Sokeng 2010: 305 – 308), and speaking and interactional skills are not much better.

The CBA-RLS comes as a new impetus into the development of these oral skills. CBA-RLS replaces the objective-based approach (OBA hereafter) which, interpretedly, taught language so that “language items both relevant and irrelevant, had to be memorised by the learners with the hope that one day, they would have a situation in which to apply such knowledge” (MINESEC[1], 2012: 64). The CBA-RLS curriculum effected in August 2012 by ministerial order was therefore an innovation, seeking to make the language learnt directly relevant to the learner. When this curriculum had been tried for two school years (2012/2013 and 2013/2014). Then in July 2014, ministerial order N° 264/14/MINESEC/IGE OF 13th August 2014 to outline the syllabi for Sixième and Cinquième (first and second levels in the general French-speaking secondary school) enhanced the tried curriculum into a more contextual CBA-RLS curriculum. Triggered in Sixième in the year 2014/2016, it move on to Cinquième in 2015/2016, and will so continue up to Terminale. If making the learners orally proficient is not sheer propaganda, how effective are the contributions this new curriculum makes for the effective development of the learners’ listening and speaking skills? The paper compares the 2012 and the 2014 curricula, with much interest in this regard.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW

In The English Language Proficiency of Francophone Secondary School Leavers in Cameroon, Sokeng (2010) had discovered that many French-speaking students leave the high-school without a clear knowledge of their actual English language proficiency. She set out to evaluate the learners overall proficiency, nonetheless including details such as how they do in listening comprehension, reading comprehension, structure (grammar and vocabulary), writing, the factors that contribute to their poor or good performance, and the effectiveness of the testing tool used in the Baccalaureat exam. The learners in her study displayed only acceptable proficiencies in reading (58.3% below average), in writing structure (52% below average) and in structure (63.7% below average) and their worst performances in listening (93.7% below average). Sokeng decried the neglect of oral skills in the classroom and on the official exams paper, and suggests that English be taught and tested following the TOEFL model, to enhance learners language proficiencies

Nkwetisama (2012) thinks that an integration pedagogy (otherwise known as competency-based approach) is a solution to boosting learners’ accuracy and fluency in language use, as they would be involved in solving their own daily problems using English, with an adequate integration of language segments (grammar, vocabulary and phonology) in the development of learners’ four language skills and know-how. To this effect, he suggests a scheme of work and a lesson plan, which Nforbi & Siéwoué (2016b) criticised. But the main difficulty is that these learners seldom find anyone with whom to practise the language especially in rural areas. Even in the urban zone where Anglophone children can be found these latter instead struggle to speak French, so as to be bilingual. We hardly find any francophone student struggling to learn English from their Anglophone fellows. Another challenge with Nkwetisama’s proposal, which has been faced till date, is at the level of the terminology in competence-based language teaching, which used to impede seriously on the understanding and ipso facto the implementation of the new curriculum.

In “Perspectives for the Competence-based Approach with entry through Real Life Situations in the teaching of English in Cameroon Francophone secondary schools”, Nforbi and Siéwoué (2016b) put out that the implementation of the 2012 CBA curriculum was not adequate partly because of lack of understanding, and partly because of apathy on the part of the teachers. The understanding problems were recorded as the strange terminology (families of situations, categories of actions, outcome, skills, etc.), strange because the field teachers had never encountered these terms before, the strange symbols referred to as ‘sounds of English’ on the syllabus, as well as the interrelatedness of items on the curriculum. Again, the pedagogic seminars organised annually as a forum for teachers’ continuous training used to gather very few teachers, the heads of departments in the various schools, whereas it could be opened to all the teachers. Teachers in the study reported serious problems in lesson planning (scheme of work, lesson plan), lesson delivery (lack of didactic materials and uneasy individualisation of the teaching) and language testing (no formal testing format, uneasy individualisation, lack of testing guidance …). Though the study proves that this approach could be very promising for the development of learners’ four basic language skills, the teachers’ heart cry is for guidance, the explicitation of the new method (understanding, planning, teaching and testing) and adapted didactic materials such as relevant course books. We also demonstrate the need for a course book in the language pedagogy enterprise, and provide guidelines for its design. Till date, this gap stands.

The place of linguistic knowledge is problematic in the whole enterprise. Since 2012, it is not rare to observe that language knowledge per se is pushed to the background and EFL teachers tend to focus on topics such as health, the environment, the media, trying to teach the vocabulary of the domains and at the same time creating awkward lessons without titles (grammar, vocabulary, speaking, …), no specific outcome, because of confusion (Siéwoué, 2014: 35 - 42). In this connexion, Nforbi & Siéwoué (2016a) in “Tense and Aspect in the Era of Competence-Based English Language Teaching in Cameroon’s Secondary Schools” pose the hypothesis that most French-speaking Cameroonians in general and students in particular do not speak English eloquently because they possess no mastery of the tense and aspect system of the language, as different from the French. We prove that there is no major enhancement in learners’ mastery of these key verb phrase structures throughout their secondary education journey. The learners face hellish problems encoding and decoding tense - as grammatical expression of time (See Bernard Comrie, 1985[2]), and aspect – as duration/frequency of situation in the verb phrase (Comrie, 1981[3]). The tenses of English used to feature on syllabi for all seven levels in the secondary education, and were highly focused upon. But an inadequate pedagogy banning the use of French – the learners’ language of instruction – and teaching too many things in a year produced results that left much to be desired (Nforbi, 2012a : 2). We suggest that, given the place that tense and aspect hold as core elements in the verb phrase and for successful communication, the EFL pedagogy should henceforth dwell on fostering their mastery by the learners. There must me an interlanguage-informed pedagogy that frees learners’ English from the interference of their other languages. This should be even more carefully watched upon in the era of CBA-RLS. Listening and speaking, as well as the tenses of English, feature prominently on the EFL syllabi. But the gap between policy and practice is obvious.

1. PROBLEM

Though the listening and speaking skills feature on both the 2012 and the 2014 CBA curricula, these skills seem still not to have been thoroughly reflected upon and tackled in the classrooms. These skills have not been tested so far in the official examinations (Sokeng, 2010, Nforbi, 2016). The teaching of listening and speaking in the Francophone secondary schools is not only rare but also seems to follow the same patterns: for the listening lesson, teacher reads a passage and students answer the questions; for the speaking lessons, students are given phrases to repeat (“thank you!” – “you are welcome”, etc.), to initiate and sustain interaction, and asked to practice dialogues. The minute skills involved in listening and speaking are generally not focused upon. The usual apathy of the older teachers and the newness of the recent teacher training college graduates, along with the novelty of the CBA-RLS demand training in teaching listening and speaking with much theoretical grounding, especially now when the decision makers over emphasise the need to develop the learners four language skills. If “a growing number of people of both communities are investing efforts to be able to use English and French fluently in real life situations” (MINESEC, 2012:64), then there is no better time to give the teachers the necessary equipment, especially when English is increasingly being established as the language of the global village (see Crystal (2004); Richards (2008: 1); Focho (2011), MINESEC (2014a:16)), for the solution to social problems are almost always sought for in the educational system (Nforbi, 2012: 10). In this connexion, this paper investigates into the improvement between 2012 and 2014, and analyses the provisions for the concrete development of learners’ listening and speaking skills.

1. THEORY AND METHOD

This paper focuses on the 2012 and the 2014 Competence-based EFL curricula, in a bid to provide a report of the major changes, from an analysis of the contents of both documents. In The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research edited by Liza Given, content analysis is defined as “the intellectual process of categorizing qualitative textual data into clusters of similar entities, or conceptual categories, to identify consistent patterns and relationships between variables or themes” (2003: 120). The textual data in this approach include not only written documents but also non-written information (photographic data and others). In the analysis, the researcher seeks clusters that converge into themes. Content analysis may be carried out not only at the surface level of text, but also at a deeper level of “inductive insights inferred from more sustained, iterative, and recursive interaction with textual data” (ibid).

The data derived from both documents will therefore be categorised, and tables will be used in the comparison to improve intelligibility. The existence of an item in one programme and its absence in the other programme is of interest. Such items can be analysed to discover the rationale behind the deletion or the insertion, leading therefore to what we may refer to as innovation analysis[4]. These innovations will in turn be matched with previously recorded difficulties, in terms of the extent to which those difficulties are addressed. It is only realistic to feel, at the end of the analysis, that some issues will not have been adequately addressed. Given (ibid: 121) puts it this way: “The researcher also should consider what is missing or not present in the text being analysed”. We narrow this part down to the pronunciation component.

1. THE 2012 AND 2014 PROGRAMMES OF STUDY

Both programmes of study are competence-based, and the second was published as an amelioration of the first, as the difficulties that teachers encountered in the field had been addressed in the 2014 programme, supported by a guide for the teachers. This 2014 curriculum goes a long way to cover the challenges that we recorded earlier (Nforbi & Siéwoué, 2016b), especially as the teacher’s guide is provided.

The contents of both programmes of study follow the following stages:

• A general presentation of the programme of study
• The students’ exit profile (MINESEC, 2014a only)
• The place of the programme of study in the new curriculum
• The contribution of the programme of study to the broad area of language learning
• The contribution of the syllabus to areas of life (MINESEC, 2014a only)
• The ‘families of situations covered’ (2012), referred to as ‘Areas of life broadly covered by this programme of study’ in MINESEC(2014a)
• The synoptic table of the modules (2012) or breakdown of the modules (2014)
• The various modules, five modules for one level.

A comparison of the structure of a module shows the following stages:

• Module’s title
• Time and number of weeks to cover the module (2012 only)
• Presentation of the module
• Contribution [of the module (2012)] to the curriculum goals
• Contribution of the module to the broad area of learning
• Contribution of the modules to the domains of life
• Coverage of the module (2014 only)
• Contents of the module.

When both programmes are compared, an index of the macro-level changes is seen at the level of the parentheses in the stages above. There are elements that are shown as present in the 2012 curriculum only. These elements have therefore been judged as unnecessary and wiped away. Other elements are specified in brackets as ‘2014 only’, an index of innovation. The rest of the stages are consistent with both programmes. An analysis of these changes shows the following.

There are two new elements included in the 2014 curriculum, at the level of its structure: the student’s exit profile, defining the francophone learner’s profile at the end of the first cycle, the number of tasks they should be able to carry out in English, spelled out for listening and speaking, for reading, and for writing. The specification of these learning outcomes is relevant in that it gives the classroom teacher a big picture of the number and nature of these tasks, and can serve as a guide for achievement evaluation so that at the end of each year, teachers can have an idea about the level of their learners with regards to the exit profile. It is also an indication for the common basis on which exam questions can be set nationwide. This is a strong innovation which provides down-to-earth information about the certificate examinations that are upcoming.

The exit profile involving listening and speaking includes:

• Interact orally with classmates, teachers, etc.
• Give information to others on a specific topic
• Defend his/her point of view on a simple and familiar topic
• Summarize information from a simple text orally
• Interpret facial expressions, mime and simple gestures
• Talk about/describe certain cultural/traditional aspects in Cameroon
• Sing songs/recite poems on real life situations and other familiar topics (2014:17)

If the learners must be taught how to use English to carry out tasks in this domain, the pedagogy must ensure a careful tackling of all the spoken language components, attitudes, gestures, tone, stress, and the sounds of English.

The ‘contribution of the syllabus to areas of life’ section is simply a cataloguing and use of the five areas of life (or domains of life) as entry points for learning (2014:18). The different modules are each shaped from the areas of life catalogued and adapted to learners’ levels. These areas of life will be discussed below. The contents of both study programmes are categorised and compared in the tables below.

Table 1: Comparison of 2012 and 2014 general presentations of study programme

2012

2014

Observations

Rationale

• The need for a more fruitful approach: OBA proved inadequate in supporting the bilingual policy of Cameroon.

• The need for a more fruitful approach: OBA proved inadequate in supporting the bilingual policy of Cameroon
• System must be upgraded to suit innovations in scientific knowledge

There is a need to match curriculum with innovations in scientific knowledge

Outcome

• learner personality development as a conscientious, moral and responsible citizen of Cameroon, Africa and the world

• learner personality development as a conscientious, moral and responsible citizen of Cameroon, Africa and the world

• identical

Scope

• Diverse areas of life and classes of situations

• Diverse areas of life and classes of situations

• identical

Requirements

• Fair mastery of English grammar, vocabulary and phonology
• Capacity to receive and give information orally and in writing, and to react appropriately to instructions

• Fair mastery of English grammar, vocabulary and phonology
• Capacity to receive, analyse and give information orally and in writing, and to react appropriately to written and oral messages

• Not only receive and give information, but also the analytic capacity of learner
• Not only reacting appropriately to instructions, but more broadly, oral and written messages

The innovations in scientific knowledge referred to are difficult to capture within the curriculum as it is described in MINESEC (2014). In addition to linguistic knowledge (grammar, vocabulary and phonology), the learners are not to give and receive information only, but they must be able to process the information, to use their intellect in doing the analysis, that is, knowing why they should say this and not that, and understanding subtle meanings in messages. Again, they are not to react to instructions only (see total physical response method), but to messages in general, oral or written texts.

Table 2 : Comparison of 2012 and 2014 places of study programme in the new curriculum

2012

2014

Observations

Approach

• Interdisciplinary education

• Interdisciplinary education
• Professionalization of education
• Rooting learners in national cultures

• Not only interdisciplinary education, but also prominence of professionalization and national cultures

Objective

• Cross-curricular competence

• Cross-curricular competence

• Identical

Contribution of EFL

• Development of learner’s overall ability to listen, speak, read and write competently in real life situations

• Development of learner’s overall ability to listen, speak, read and write competently in real life situations

• Identical

Status of English

• Compulsory tool for communication, survival, and for national and international integration

• Compulsory tool for communication, survival, and for national and international integration

• Identical

In addition to making use of an interdisciplinary approach, the 2014 programme subscribes to the general educational policy of professionalization, and is intended to root the learners into their cultures. For example, it does not suffice to be able to say good morning, but the right attitude should be adopted with respect to the interlocutor. You do not greet your father as you would greet your teacher or a Bamileke, Bamoun, Foulbe or Beti king. The spoken language must be accompanied by a culturally-bound attitudinal body language.

Table 3: Domains of LIFE (2012), or Areas of life broadly covered’ (2014a)

2012 (pp. 64 – 65)

2014 (pp. 19 – 20)

Observations

1. Family and social life

1. Family and social life

• Identical

1. Economic life and occupations

1. Economic life and occupations

• Identical

1. Health education, sports, leisure and well-being

1. Environment, well-being and health

• ‘environment’ is added while sports and leisure are deleted

1. Citizenship

1. Citizenship and human rights

• ‘Human rights’ is added. Inside the module, there are also mentions of duties.

1. Information, communication and the media

1. Media and Communication

• The term ‘information’ is deleted

1. Human rights and duties

///

• 2012 modules 6 and 7 are inserted into 2014 modules 4 and 3

1. Environmental awareness

Seemingly, the need to reduce the number of modules so as to avoid sequencing difficulties as discussed earlier was translated here by the merging of related themes and the deletion of non-unavoidable themes such as sports and leisure, which could be study in further classes.

Table 4: Synoptic table of the modules (2012) or Breakdown of the modules (2014)

2012 (pp. 64 – 65)

2014 (pp. 19 – 20)

Observations

Cycle

1st

1st

• identical

Sub-cycle

Observation

Column does not exist

• column is deleted

Level

Year 1 (general and technical schools)

6ème

• each class is provided with its own separate syllabus, and general education is separated from technical education

Year 2 (general and technical schools)

Domains of life

Column does not exist

Specified

• Column is inserted to match with titles of modules

Titles of modules

Non-verbal (e.g.: “language interactions relating to health and well-being”, Module 5, 6ème)

Verbal (e.g.: “Using language to attend basic health and safety needs, explore times and seasons and have a responsible feeding habit”, Module 3, 6ème)

• Goals for language use are specified

Status

Every module is compulsory

Every module is compulsory

• Identical

Time

Varying between 21 and 24 hours

15 hours all through

• Number of teaching hours reduced to 15.

Here, the alterations include the addition of a column for the domains of life, matching with the different titles of modules which in turn spell the goals for language use, so that the classroom teacher can evaluate the achievement of these goals. Titles are not non-verbal and vague as in 2012. In 2014, the learner is the one to USE language, hence the action verb ‘using language’. Leaners are to be gradually transformed into language users. It is also important to note that the programme was the same for technical and general education in 2012, but the 2014 programme separates them. The compulsory status of modules further establish common grounds for evaluation nationwide. The changes related to teaching hours are commented on below.

The module

Whereas the 2012 programme indicates time and number of weeks inside a module (e.g. “[24 hrs. (8 weeks)]”), the same information is provided under the title ‘coverage of the module’ in the 2014 programme: “the teacher will endeavour to cover … the module within the prescribed 15 teaching hours”, with an understood meaning of the number of weeks, since three hours are put aside each week for EFL. “Three hours [1 week] are set aside for the testing of learners’ competency to listen, speak, read, and/or write appropriately (MINESEC 2014: 20, 24, 28, 32). In the last module for Sixième, this testing goes for “the students’ ability to listen to simplified dialogues or stories, speak and read simplified texts, and/or write appropriately” (ibid: 36), showing that the learners will have acquired many more subtle skills in the coverage of the four previous modules, and will have attained a point where many of such subtle skills can be operationalized for more complex tasks (listen to simplified dialogues, stories, read simplified texts). The number of weeks to cover a module is therefore six weeks. There are three innovations: first, the reduction of teaching hours from 21 – 24 to 15 makes it henceforth very possible to handle a module within an administrative sequence (18 hours, six weeks). Second, the minimal coverage percentage is specified: 90% for the first four modules and 80% for the last module. Last, the group of skills to be emphasised is specified: “with emphasis on spoken language” (MINESEC 2014:20, 24; 28; 32; 36). These modules further establish a basis for evaluation across the country, especially as the first BEPC[5] exams will be written in 2017 or 2018[6].). Leaving aside a whole week for skills evaluation is a major innovation, supported by the evaluation hints at the end of both programmes and the tackling of the various skills elicited in the accompanying pedagogic guide (MINESEC, 2014 b).

The content of every module is fitted into similar table, with 3 main headings in three columns, covering 2, 2 and 3 columns respectively, as follows:

1. Contextual framework: - Family of situations

• Examples of real life situations

1. Competence indicators: - Categories of actions

• Examples of actions

1. Resources: - Essential knowledge (speech work, grammar and vocabulary)

• Attitudes
• Other resources (human resources, materials and methods)

The structure above remains basically identical in both contents but we note two changes in two columns. The 2012 programme presents three categories of actions while the 2014 programmes presents four. The former has ‘initiating conversations’, ‘carrying out actions in response to oral stimuli’ and ‘making use of written language’ (for reading and writing). The advantage of the second category of actions is that it focuses on listening comprehension as “listen …. + action” and the evaluation is obvious the learner carries out the right action or not. If good use were to be made of this category, the learners’ listening comprehension skills would be highly developed. But the drawback in this categorisation is that speaking is split and does not reflect natural language use. In initiating a conversation, MINESEC (2012:72) provides such actions as “greets people and takes leave”, and in the second category no provision is made for responding to greetings (ibid: 73). Contrariwise, the 2014 programme has four categories of actions corresponding to the four basic language skills.

The other change is at the level of speech work, where all the strange sounds have disappeared. It is probable that a computer problem changed the sounds of the 2012 programmes into forms of objects, for the square brackets are consistently present around these objects and each module had many of them. The 2014 programme for Sixième, for instance, has no phonetic symbols but topics. This point is further discussed in the section ‘The pronunciation problem’ below.

Evaluation

The goal of assessment is to help teacher regulate learners’ skills development (2012and evaluate their performance (2014). Evaluation is ongoing and sequencing and harmonisation of evaluation are determined by the school’s department. Both curricula suggest basically the same test techniques and the skills to which they correspond. The 2014 curriculum indicates that the evaluation criteria adopted by the department should be made known to the learners and advised the teachers to give their learners multiple opportunities to upgrade their performances. Assessment focuses on one skill and should not only be written, but also oral. But the structure of the examination paper in the prospective official exams remains unknown, though the examination focus is suggested – at least 80% of modules must be covered, emphasis should be laid on spoken language.

The pedagogic guide

The pedagogic guide referred to here as MINESEC (2014b) is another significant innovation in the 2014 curriculum in that it equips the teachers with the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to successfully facilitate learning through the curriculum. It explains the objectives of the programme of study, the methodology (the theoretical backing of the curriculum, the drawing of lesson plans – maintaining Nkwetisama’s (2012) proposal, how to read and interpret the document (MINESEC, 2014a), guide lines on assessment, drawing the scheme of work), learner skill development and insights on learning styles. The availability of a teacher’s guide is a big step ahead in facilitating and implementing CBA-RLS curriculum, and will reduce teachers’ complaints to a large extent, provided the guide reaches them and they find time to go through it.

1. THE PRONUNCIATION COMPONENT

The speech work items on the syllabus are presented in Table 5.

Table 5 : Speech work items on the syllabus

2012

Module 1

• Vowels and consonants

Module 2

• Pronounce the definite and indefinite articles in isolation and in connected speech correctly

Module

• Pronounce weak and strong form in speech

Module 4

• Pronounce s and es plural regular noun formation correctly
• Recycle the strong and weak forms

Module 5

• Recycle homophones
• General revision

There is a conspicuous negligence of the sounds of English in the new syllabus, whether in 2012 where the symbols were too strange to be called phonetic symbols (Nforbi & Siéwoué, 2016b) or in 2014 where phonetic symbols are bluntly left aside, though the teacher’s guide advises to integrate pronunciation activities into lessons, to accompany the learners in speaking tasks (MINESEC, 2014:35). That a teacher should decide which sounds to study with the learners is not a wary approach, although it must be exploited in the meantime. One could think that it is advantageous for the early learner of Sixième not to stress up their minds with spelling and sounds at the same time. But there are many disadvantages not inserting distinct sounds to be taught in the syllabus:

First, the Cameroonian EFL teachers are not native speakers of English, and therefore the challenges they face in attaining RP are a reality. It would not be unrealistic to declare that the English of some of these teachers leaves much to be desired, as the insufficient presence of trained teachers – who are not exempted – is complemented by part-time teachers with certificates between the GCE Advanced Level or the Francophones’ Baccalauréat and Master’s degrees in languages, as well as other fields of study. It is not unusual to see Anglophone physics or geography teachers teaching EFL (see Siéwoué, 2013: 45 – 46; Siéwoué, 2014: 47). At the same time, the learners tend to see the teachers as second to God, and will copy their pronunciation. The learners’ attention needs to be drawn to the reference found in dictionary transcriptions.

If these teachers who have studied other subjects should teach English, therefore, there must be intra-departmental session where they are trained in various language issues, including the sounds and pronunciation patterns of English. The difficulty at this level is that not much profit can be made out of this training, since these teachers teach English just for the moment, until an English language teacher is available. Nonetheless, the training is necessary and in addition to the learners, the teachers themselves are beneficiaries. In the absence of this training, the heads of department should accompany these teachers so as to ensure quality teaching.

Second, if the learners are to learn the use of ‘the’ as either [ðə] or [ðɪ], the different realisations must be transcribed for memory sake. Teachers put needless demands on learners’ memories when they ask them to repeat words after them and think that they will memorise the pronunciation. In some cases the pronunciation is actually memorised, but in many others, many are the students who forget it, and the end result is inability to speak or listen to English. Teaching is all about facilitating learning, and all the assets in this regard should be operationalized.

Third, CBA-RLS over-emphasises the need to put the learner at the centre of their learning, an enterprise whose impact should be the development of learners’ autonomous learning. The method adopted by the ministry of Secondary Education is “student-centred and learners are accompanied to self-direct their learning, it is important to teach them the strategies that they need” (MINESEC 2014b:34). Teaching the learners the sounds of English equips them with the dictionary skills needed to articulate words that they had never encountered before, from the dictionary transcription. This is even more needed when the curriculum encourages learner creativity and student-student interaction, classroom instruction is to be at least 75% student talk (MINESEC, 2012: 73 -74, 77, 81, 84, 88, 92, 95-96, 103, 107); see also MINESEC (2014a: 21-22, 25-26, 29, 33,37), though no percentage is specified. In the effort to be creative, the learners will need to use new words in English. What these words are and how they are articulated, the dictionary will answer. If the teacher is referred to all the time when learners need to use a new word, the teaching learning will be slowed down and the teacher will be regarded, not only as facilitator – and may be not at all – but also as the ‘magister’ (welcome back to the grammar-translation age). Again, we suggest that the phonetic systems found in the learners’ pocket dictionaries be used in teaching them the sounds of English. If another system is used, maybe the one that the teacher masters best, or the one found in advanced learner’s dictionaries, these early learners may get confused and give up. This should further serve the purpose of developing learner autonomy.

Fourth, language sounds are one of the major features in oral language production, the most evident, through the other features could be perceived. Martin Bygate (2011) distinguishes four phases in the processing of oral language production, including: conceptualisation (involving access to long-term memory, tracking of the discourse, interlocutor’s knowledge and expectations, pragmatic purpose, etc.), formulation (involving the lexico-grammatical selection and phonological priming), articulation (involving the segmental and supra segmental processing), and monitoring. The syllabus as discussed above has gone a great extent in providing for the fostering of conceptualisation (such as the pre-listening activities spelled out in the pedagogic guide (MINESEC, 2014b: 34-35), formulation has to do with contextual vocabulary, grammar, and the phonological rules to govern the sounds in the utterance. The first two are greatly provided for, but for the latter, we see two occurrences in the syllabus for Sixième: the ‘-s/-es’ and the articulation of ‘the’ in connected speech. This is quite acceptable, but the articulation process must also be well catered for, by an adequate teaching of sounds and supra-segmental features.

Fifth, the need for the development of autonomous learning and use of new words is further sustained by Bobda & Mbangwana’s (2004:37) remark that “indeed, the inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation in English are disconcerting”. They go on demonstrating that the same letter or sequence of letters can be phonetically manifested differently and the same sound can be matched with various spellings. For instance, ‘a’ has nine phonetic manifestations, ‘s’ has five, etc. (ibid: 37-38) and [i:] matches with eight spelling representations, [a:] has nine representations, [tʃ] has four, and the list continues. (ibid: 44-45). The sounds and spelling discrepancies continue with silent letters (halfpenny, knee, calm, …), homophones (see/sea, cue/queue, …) and heterophones, words with same spelling but different pronunciations with different meanings (row/row, minute/minute, tear/tear, …), and there are too many instances of these in the language.

It should be noted here that in French, there is a high level matching of one-to-one sound spelling, though there are some few exceptions to the rule, including mischievous accents, doubling of consonants and old French spellings[7]. The early French-speaking learner of English approaches the L2 with this previous knowledge. However, though both English and French use the 26-letter Latin alphabet, there are sound and spelling discrepancies. The learners therefore need the necessary strategy to facilitate the learning of a language with a similarity relationship of ‘contrast’, that is, the learner perceives L2 form/pattern as significantly different from L1 form/pattern (Ringbom & Jarvis, 2011). We have heard many of our students brandishing this as one of the major reasons why they cannot speak English, and think of using English as a solely God-given ability.

It is a necessity to train these learners from early classes like Sixième to read and to do phonetic transcriptions. So that they would spend seven years focusing on, amongst others, the very important language component of pronunciation, and seven years of articulating new words from their dictionary phonetic transcriptions, and not simply the non-native teacher’s pronunciation. The seven-year benefit will help greatly in their spoken English development, and the results may be astonishing. This endeavour should not be retarded till the university. The learners will neither study nor discover all that they were supposed to have mastered in seven years during the three years of undergraduate studies. And helping such “ESL[8] learners work to modify their pronunciation/speech patterns toward increased intelligibility is especially challenging – for both student and teacher — for the patterns are likely to be well entrenched and resistant to change” (Morley, 1991). She further quotes Wong (1986:232-233) who warns that “the long-term effects of neglecting pronunciation are most dramatically exemplified by the accountants, programmers, police officers, telephone operators, and engineers enrolled in accent improvement and effective communication courses”. This warning clearly spells out the necessity of giving pronunciation the place it rightly deserves.

The classroom teacher could even transcribe each difficult word systematically, encouraging the learners, gradually, to check out in the dictionary. We insist on this because, as we have seen, articulation is a prominent process and component of all oral skills, whether receptive (listening) or productive (speaking, loud reading) or interactional. The necessity is even more emphasised in a socio-economic context where immersion programmes have become almost unthinkable.

A sixth reason for teaching the sounds of English and drawing the learner’s attention to word pronunciation in the dictionary (as a reference) is that the English language has travelled across the globe and the non-native speakers of English have developed varieties of English and some of the varieties are claimed for identity. Here we are reminded of Kachru’s three concentric circles of English. The dictionary skills that involve pronunciation arm both the teachers and, much more, the students with the necessary tools to reach out to the Received Pronunciation (RP), also called Standard British English (BrE). Bobda & Mbangwana (2004:192-214) study the American accent and the Cameroonian accents of English putting out their major differences from RP in many regards: the sounds, the stress deviations, spelling-influenced pronunciations, etc. They still demonstrate that English does not vary only geographically across the globe, even within the same community, it can vary according to social class, ethnic groups, gender, style, etc. at the level of phonology, the variations do not only involve the sounds and stress, but other supra-segmental features, for instance intonation and rhythm (Crystal, 2004: 168). Crystal continues to discuss the need for similarity in the Englishes of the world, because they have increasingly grown dissimilar.

The pull imposed by the need for identity which has been making New Englishes dissimilar from British English, could be balanced by a pull imposed by a need for intelligibility, on a world scale, which will make them increasingly similar, through the continued use of Standard English. (2004:178)

This should be the rationale behind the Cameroonian educational and administrative policies of promoting Standard British English, and it is the role of pedagogy to implement the policy. The teaching of English sounds is therefore, amongst others, a subtle but significant way of preparing the learners to interact with the English speakers of the globe without much difficulty, since they all and relatively have reference to RP. The curriculum wants the learners to grow up to be citizens not only of the nation (Cameroon), but also of Africa and of the world (MINESEC 2014a:16), and intends to “prepare them for smooth insertion into a more demanding job market worldwide, through a pertinent teaching/learning process” (MINESEC 2014a:3).

Pronunciation holds an unshakable place in oral communication, especially in the era of globalisation. Joan Morley (1991) puts it this way:

Overall, with today’s renewed professional commitment to empowering students to become effective, fully participating members of the English-speaking community in which they communicate, it is clear that there is a persistent, if small, groundswell of movement to write pronunciation back into the instructional equation but with a new look and a basic premise: Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence[9].

Richards (2001:28) confirms in turn that pronunciation is significant in talk as performance. Morley (ibid) draws a parallel between speech production (comprising various micro aspects of pronunciation) and the overall speech performance, reproduced below.

Figure 1: Parallel between two components of spoken English: Speech production and Speech performance

The figure is quite expressive. We could only add comment that, the more frequently sound, word and phrase pronunciation is practiced, the better the individual in oral performances in clarity, accuracy, fluency and intelligibility.

1. RECORDINGS AND AUDIO-VISUAL MATERIALS FOR LISTENING: AN ASSET

Both the 2012 and the 2014 curricula provide that the learners listen to recordings and audio-visual materials – see for example MINESEC (2012: 73, 77, 80, 83 – 84, 87, 91, 94-95, 98-99, 102,106) and MINESEC (2014b: 21, 25, 29, 33, 37), but in the field, these media are very absent, and the teachers must manage to wangle a few. Though MINESEC (2014b) brings out very useful guidance in tackling the pedagogy of the four skills in general and the oral skills in particular, curriculum implementation and achievement of curriculum goals will be highly paralysed. Recordings and audio visual media are quality tools for the oral presentation of the skills on the curriculum. When a learner has to listen to health advices, to dialogues related to selling and buying goods, to TV and radio news reports, to instructions on the phone, to departure and arrival announcements at the airport, to passages with specific information on the Environment, economic and professional life and all this kind of stuff, and as they learn the notional and functional component, they must also learn the language, audio and audio-visual media become of utmost importance.

Languages have tones, and one of the first benefits of the listening exercise is that the language learner gets the tone of the language they are learning. This is true for both L1 and L2 language learners. Even without understanding a set of national languages, a Cameroonian who has had the chance to be exposed to them will use tone, among other features, to distinguish Ewondo from Fulfulde, the Bamileke languages, etc. And this is the reason why teachers should bring native speakers recordings into the classroom quite often. Once the learners have picked the tone, fluency is fostered. And it is the benefit of immersion programmes, where the L2 learner is exposed to L2 community and their daily use of language. The Francophone students are encouraged to befriend their Anglophone fellows, to visit them in their homes and learn English from them. Though RP may be attacked here, the Francophone learners will be in some kind of immersion. Widdowson (1990:14) puts out that “immersion […] would seem to be a kind of baptism which mysteriously induces the gift of tongues” but insists that “the success of immersion by medium teaching is not complete. Students appear to acquire more in the way of fluency than accuracy” (ibid: 15). Accuracy will be developed through the training of learner’s conceptualisation, formulation, articulation and monitoring processes, to follow Bygate’s (2011) nomenclature discussed earlier. But the issue is, how will the teachers get these recordings?

One could readily answer that as the teachers listen to the radio, watch the different national and international TV channels, as they browse on the internet, they could gather the recordings. This is very possible, but it poses many problems. First, it is still a reality in Cameroon today that not all the teachers are computer-literate, even amongst the younger population. Those who fall in this category will find it difficult to do the exercise. Second, there is no guarantee that the media files would be gathered and didacticised in time. Third, even if the media could be made ready for instruction in time, the discrepancy between the schools will be considerable: not only will there be any uniformity in the training of the students, but also there will be no basis on which to evaluate them at the official examination because of that lack of uniformity. Fourth, it may be very costly for these teachers to engage in the business of gathering audio-visual materials for teaching, at the individual level, even at the level of the department, there is need at this level for a budget line. Lastly, we want to put forward that the design of such materials as audio and audio-visual materials strongly need to espouse the tenets of the educational policy in the country. And not every teacher will take time to go through these ethical, socio-political and economic restrictions before using a self-designed material in the classroom. It is not fully in the teacher’s role to design such materials for their teaching. As a major part of a curriculum, material design also “involve consideration of the whole complex of philosophical, social and administrative factors which contribute to the planning of an educational programme” (Allen, 1984). The curriculum ideologies[10] must be reflected through the choice and use of materials.

The design of audio, visual and audio-visual materials should be left to materials designers who must in turn use these media to support the textbooks produced to accompany the teaching/learning process (see Nforbi & Siéwoué (2016b)) for a discussion of the needed course book to support CBA-RLS in English as a foreign language). It is the government’s duty to instruct the commercial textbook designers to complement their textbooks with audio, visual and audio-visual materials and provide the curricular restrictions to this effect. It is rather sad to know that though such examples as the materials used for IELTS and TOEFL exams preparation are well known, the State has not promoted them. Quality education demands the use of the media nowadays. Textbook designers could be asked to give these media a prominent place in their products, so that a grammar or vocabulary or writing lesson can make use of them, at different stages of the lessons. The media should be burnt on DVDs or CDs and annexed to the textbook, so that each student will have a copy. This is where the multimedia centres in schools become useful for language teaching. They have been mistaken for simple computer rooms – for computer studies – for long in our schools. Another advantage would be that, even at home, the learners will be able to replay the media and train their oral skills. The use of audio and audio-visual materials is an aspect of language teaching that is conspicuously absent in Cameroonian schools. There is a need for quality materials, and the commercial textbook designers must be put down to the task.

Again, the argument will be raised against this point of view, that it is costly to produce such materials, that their prices will be raised and not every Cameroonian parent will afford a copy for their children, and if this were to be done in all the subjects at the secondary level? Our answer would be that it may be difficult, but it is not impossible. The materials can be subsidised by various fundings. It simply takes a governmental will, as the government targets emergence by 2035. We have already seen that most social problems find their solution in the educational sector of the nation. Where there is a will, there is a way.

CONCLUSION

The EFL teachers used to be confused about what was actually expected of them and how they would go about it, after the first curriculum document was released in 2012. The 2014 curriculum is quite more simplified and specific, and major innovations in terms of a defined exit profile at the end of the first cycle, the fitting of each of the five module into an administrative sequence, a module coverage rate of at least 80%, and a setting aside of 3 hours (1 week) each sequence to evaluate learners’ skills, all working together for a common grounds for upcoming official exams. But teachers may already be anxious about the nature of the English language paper. Another strong innovation, a teacher’s guide was also released in July 2014, and constitute a theoretical backing and practical help for classroom pedagogy. But one notices a glaring absence of plans for the teaching of the sounds of English and pronunciation, momentous elements of spoken language.

REFERENCES

1. Allen, J. P. B. (1984): “General-Purpose Language Teaching: a Variable Focus Approach” in Brumfit, C. J. (ed): General English Syllabus Design: Curriculum and Syllabus Design for the General English Classroom, Oxford, Pergamon Press, pp. 61 – 74
2. Bobda, A. S. & Mbangwana, P. (2004): An Introduction to English Speech, Yaounde, B&K Language Institute. First published in 1993 with the title An Introduction to Spoken English.
3. Bygate, M. (2011): “Teaching and Testing Speaking”, in Long, M. H. & Doughty, C. J. (eds): The Handbook of Language Teaching, London, Blackwell, pp. 412 - 440
4. Crystal, D. (2004): A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Oxford, Blackwell. (1st edition: 1980)
5. Focho, G. N. (2011): “Student Perceptions of English as a Developmental Tool in Cameroon” in Coleman, H. (ed): Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language, London, British Council, paper 7.
6. Given, L. M. (2003): The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, Vol 1 & 2, London, Sage.
7. MINEDUC (2004): National syllabus for the teaching of English to French-speaking students.
8. MINESEC (2012): “Programme d’étude: Anglais” in Curriculum du sous-cycle d’observation de l’enseignement secondaire (6ème, 5ème), pp 62-109
9. MINESEC (2014a): Programme of Study: English for Francophones General Secondary Education : Sixième
10. MINESEC (2014b): Pedagogic Guide English to Francophones: Secondary General Education, First Cycle
11. Morley, J. (1991): “The Pronunciation Component in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages”, in TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 25, N°3, pp. 481 – 520.
12. Nforbi, E. & Siéwoué, M. B. (2016a): “Tense and Aspect in the Era of Competence-Based English Language Teaching in Cameroon’s Secondary Schools”, in International Journal of English Language Teaching, Vol. 4, N°4, pp. 40 - 54
13. Nforbi, E. & Siéwoué, M. B. (2016b): “Perspectives for the Competence-Based Approach with entry through Real Life Situations in the teaching of English in Cameroon Francophone secondary schools”, in Nka’ Lumière: Revue Interdisciplinaire de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, N°15, pp. 3 - 23.
14. Nforbi, E. (2012): Bilingual Training in English in Tertiary Education in Cameroon, unpublished PhD thesis, Yaoundé I University.
15. Nforbi, E. (2013): Second Language Education in Cameroon, Yaoundé, Harmattan.
16. Nkwetisama, C. M. (2012): “The Competency Based Approach to English Language Education and the Walls between the Classroom and the Society in Cameroon: Pulling Down the Walls” in Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Academy Publisher, Finland, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 516-523
17. Richards, J. C. (2001): Teaching listening and speaking: from theory to practice, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008
18. Ringbom & Jarvis (2011) : “The Importance of Cross Linguistic Similarity in Foreign Language Learning”, in Long, M. H. & Doughty, C. J. (eds): The Handbook of Language Teaching, London, Blackwell, pp. 106 - 118
19. Siéwoué, M. B. (2013): The Use of Tense and Aspect in English by French-Speaking Students: The Case of Troisième and Terminale in Dschang, unpublished DIPES II dissertation, Bamenda University.
20. Siéwoué, M. B. (2014): Competence-Based English Language Teaching in the Menoua Division: A Teacher’s Perspective, unpublished Master of Philosophy dissertation, Dschang University.
21. Sokeng, S. C. (2010): The English Language Proficiency of Francophone Secondary School Leavers in Cameroon, unpublished PhD thesis, Yaounde I University.
22. Widdowson, H. G. (1991): Aspects of Language Teaching, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Emmanuel Nforbi (PhD) is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Dschang. He is actively involved in both first language (African languages) and second language education. His publications include inter alia African Languages in the Era of Globalisation (2012) and Second Language Education in Cameroon (2013) and a dozen articles in national and international journals. He is presently carrying out a survey of language testing in Cameroon.

Tel: +237 677 879 233; Email: nforbiemma@yahoo.co.uk. PO Box 49 Dschang, Cameroon.

Martin Bolivar Siéwoué (MPhil) is a High School Teacher of English and French as foreign languages in Cameroon and a PhD student in English and Commonwealth Studies, Dschang University.

Tel: +237 693 22

[1] ‘MINESEC’ is an acronym that stands for “Ministère des Enseignements Secondaires”, that is, the Cameroonian Ministry of Secondary Education. The educational sector in Cameroon is divided basically into three levels, each with a separate ministry. Thus, there is a ministry of Basic Education (for the nursery and primary levels), a ministry of Secondary Education (for the secondary level) and a ministry of Higher Education (for the tertiary or university level).

[2] Comrie, B. (1985): Tense, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

[3] Comrie, B. (1981): Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

[4] The verb ‘innovate’ is defined as ‘introduce changes and new ideas’ (Cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary, Cambridge University Press, 2003), and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (eleventh edition) explains the same verb as “change something established by introducing new methods, ideas or products”. When one asked the questions “what are the changes?”, “what are the new ideas?”, “what are the new methods?”, “what are the new products?”, the person is carrying out an innovation analysis, especially as they compare two elements, whether pieces of music, or editions of textbooks, and whatsoever. There must be one constant parameter: either the same author or group of authors, or the same culture, or the same format, or the same kind in the typology, etc.

[5] “BEPC” stands for “Brevet des Études du Premier Cycle”, a certificate obtained at the end of the fourth and last level of French-speaking general secondary school. We have difficulties translating it as “GCE O/L” (General Certificate of Education, Ordinary Level) for at least three reasons. The Francophones Cameroonians obtain a BEPC at the end of the fourth level (Troisième) of secondary education, a Probatoire at the end of the sixth level (Première) and a Baccalauréat at the end of the seventh and last level (Terminale) of secondary education. The Probatoire is a compulsory certificate for access into Terminale. A pass in all these Francophone exams is a minimal score of 10/20, average of learner’s scores in all the papers. The GCE O/L is obtained at the end of the fifth level (Form Five) of Anglophone general secondary education and the GCE A/L (Advanced Level) is obtained. A pass at the GCE O/L is obtained when the candidate has at least a C grade in a minimal number of four papers, and for the GCE A/L, a minimum number of two papers. First, there may be a match in number of years between the GCE A/L and the Baccalauréat, but no such match exists between the GCE O/L and the BEPC. Second, the criteria for pass are not identical in the two systems. Third, the curricular contents are divergent in terms of syllabi, methods, evaluation, etc. The mismatches between the Anglophone certificates and the Francophone certificates are many.

[6] The BEPC exam may soon be written in Seconde (the fifth level of secondary education), unlike now that it is written in Troisième, in a governmental will to bring about harmonisation in the educational sector in Cameroon. It already started at the primary level where Class Seven in the Anglophone system disappeared recently and the First School Leaving Certificate is now written in Class Six, corresponding to the six years after which the Francophone ‘CEP’ (Certificat des Études Primaires) is written.

[7] See Tocquet, R. (2001): Comment avoir une orthographe qui mène au succès, online, http://www.livres-gratuits.com

[8] The author makes it clear in her paper that she uses ESL for both ‘English as a Second Language’ and ‘English as a Foreign Language’.

[9] Her emphasis

[10] For more on curriculum ideologies, see Richards, J. C. (2001): Curriculum Development in Language Teaching, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 124 - 141

Comments

[Thai police certificate]

หนังสือรับรองความประพฤติจากกรมตำรวจ จัดส่งทั่วโลกภายใน 14 วัน - Get Thai Police Certificate or Thai Police Clearance Certificate in 14 days.

[TOEFL Pakistan]

TOEFL Pakistan is brief for the test of English as a overseas Language. The test is used to assess a person's capability in English reading, writing, talking and listening.

[TOEFL Pakistan]

Find best & top centers for TOEFL in Pakistan . ICD is the largest TOEFL preparation center in Pakistan.