THE LEARNING AND MASTERY OF OFFICIAL LANGUAGES: A KEY STEP TO PROFESSIONAL INSERTION IN CAMEROON

THE LEARNING AND MASTERY OF OFFICIAL LANGUAGES: A KEY STEP TO PROFESSIONAL INSERTION IN CAMEROON

II Medzogo, Sylvain

Relationships with others, in this modern globalized world, command respective challenges in communication and bring closely everyone into connection with people of other languages and cultures. The latter make people require exchanging cognitive notions, thoughts and principles through this connection, and to achieve this goal a strong medium is needed: language. Language is at the heart of human beings interaction and mostly for children’s learning. Through language, one can receive knowledge and acquire skills. Language enables both to communicate with others efficiently for a variety of objectives and to scrutinize their own and others’ experiences, feelings and ideas, giving them order and meaning. Because language is central to children’s intellectual, emotional and social development, it has an essential role across the curriculum and helps pupils’ learning to be coherent and progressive. This is a reality in Cameroonian schools and even at professional level. The fact that local, national, official and foreign languages are spoken in Cameroon makes the country unique and exceptional in Africa and even in the world. One can realise in Cameroon sub-system of Education, for instance, that a student can learn French, English, German, Spanish, Chinese or one of the 300 native languages that counts the country. Thus, Foreign and second language education has developed to unravel the challenges the present and prospective interlocutors encounter, by emphasizing on learning how to communicate successfully with others speaking a different language and living a different culture. Better still, the mother tongue as well as official languages (French and English) and some foreign languages ( Italian, Spanish, Chinese…) remain, in Cameroon, part of the curriculum throughout primary, secondary and tertiary schooling, and this enables the learners to communicate worldwide and also be in acquaintance not only with their own cultural awareness but also with the others. Languages have become very important in Cameroon in looking and getting jobs in the public administration. The premise of the paper is, then, to highlight the benefits that are hidden behind the learning of languages in Cameroon. It also shows the place languages play in the development of Cameroonians’ awareness and competence in the use of two or more languages: an asset for a better insertion in society at professional level. Keywords: Challenges, Communication, Plurilingual, Professional Level, tutored environment

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3546