Building Capacity: Using TEFL and African Languages as Development-oriented Literacy Tools

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“In the face of the growing interest in the use of African Languages by Africans as symbols of personal and cultural identity and as means of empowering the rural communities in the entreprise of national development, the need for a methodologically appropriate manual to guide the teaching and learning of African languages becomes urgent...a timely response, predicated on a policy of the symbiotic use of African languages along with partner (foreigno fficial) languages, to attain a balanced level of economic and socio-cultural development.” – Beban Sammy Chumbow, Professor of Linguistics, University of Yaounde I Building Capacity promotes the vision that the teaching of African languages can best achieve its aim of boosting the economic and cultural development of the Africans if they are made to work in synergy with a revamping of the course contents of international languages that will be taught within the frame of a development-oriented literacy curriculum. Great emphasis is put on the oral skills in the use of African languages as they are to serve as a link between the community and the school for the ultimate revitalization of the positive aspects of African cultures in a world beset by globalization. The book is supplemented with a sample of texts in the appendix that are meant to be a bridge between formal texts taught in classrooms and literacy texts that can raise the genuine interests of the local populations in that they address their immediate needs. Among the possible topics language teachers are encouraged to explore in their classes are those concerning economic development, but also such issues as health, education, the environment, food security, and conflict resolution. “Among the numerous proposals in this book is the necessity for Africans, and I would add, for the communities of Asia and Latin America, to re-think the contents of their language courses and assign them an objective which aims at the integral development of their communities.” – Jean-Pierre Angenot Professor of Linguistics, Federal University of Rondônia, Porto Velho, Brazil Ngessimo Mathe Mutaka is a full professor of linguistics at the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon. He is the author of an Introduction to African Linguistics and other books in linguistics, on AIDS prevention, and of more than forty papers published in recognized journals. Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Province Cameroon ...