ASEMKA
A LITERARY JOURNAL
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST
GHANA
No. 6
SEPTEMBER, 1989
CONTENTS
Criticism
African Autobiography and Literary Theory.....
KWADWO OPOKU-AGYEMANG.
..
Beyond Art; From Dream to Reality.........
KOFI ANYIDOHO.
5
19
L'ombre de Fanon: Une étude comparée des Soleils des
In dep ndences d'Amadou Kourou Ma et de l' Age d’or n'est
pas pour demain d'Ayi Kwei Armah ...
..
..
..32
ATTA BRITWUM
Le Chef Nanga ou une fausse représentativité: Examen du
role du 'héros' dans A Man of the People ..
.. .. 42
Y. S. BOAFO
To Rise Again: Of Women and Marriage in Mariama Bâ’s
So Long A Letter
..
........
..
49
N. JANE OPOKU-AGYEMANG
Our Literary Antecedents
FABIAN OPEKU
..
..
..
..
.. 69
Language
Les emprunts; Qu’est-ce qu’un mot français/non français? 78
PATRICK KILSON
Book Review
French Language Teaching in Africa: Issues in Applied
Linguistics: E. N. Kwofie
....
..
..
..
94
TUNDE AJIBOYE
FRENCH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN AFRICA:
ISSUES IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS
E. N. KWOFIE
LAGOS UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1985-155 PAGES
REVIEWED BY TUNDE AJIBOYE*
The appeal of the book lies in its attempt to summarize the problems
and state of French language teaching in both Francophone and Anglophone
countries of Africa. Of course, as the author constantly reminds us, his can
only be described as an attempt at a summary given the complexity, extent and
varieties of situations which French language teaching represents for the
several countries of Africa where that language is used either as a foreign
language like in Nigeria and Ghana or as an official language like in La Côte
d’lvoire and Senegal. The attempt cannot but be seen as both courageous and
enlightening; courageous because it smashes the fear of a tidy study of the
problem (multifaceted as it is) being impossible; enlightening because, thanks
to this work, it could be conveniently asserted that, within the temporal
framework that is embraced by Kwofie's research, the problems and
perspectives of French language teaching in Africa are broadly speaking,
similar.
There is in Professor Kwofie's book a wealth of documentation that is
yet to be beaten by any writer on the subject since Dupon-chel's Le frangais
d'Afrique: line langue, un dialecte ou une variete locale? (1974) and more
appropriately, David's French in Africa: A guide to the teaching of French as a
foreign language (1975).
French Language Teaching in Africa is broken into six chapters all
neatly and coherently strung together. The first chapter concerns the debatable
notion of 'African' French and the question of variety choice in French
language teaching. As a theoretical framework, linguistics, in particular applied
linguistics, is considered in chapter 2 as a possible feeder in the task of foreign
language, moreso in a multilingual, multiethnic setting like Africa. Chapters 3,
4, and 5 could be taken as sub-set of the whole set as they each deal with a
chosen aspect of the teaching of French language: grammar, lexicon and
pronunciation in that order. An appraisal of French language teaching should in
principle, include a consideration of the evaluation procedure which serves as a
tool for verifying extent of learning. This is the focus of chapter 6. Chapter
after chapter, Kwofie demonstrates a clear and keen awareness of, and a deep
reflexion on a question which he has been pursuing since his Teaching a
Foreign Language to the West African Students (1978), (monograph),
Linguistic Research Inc., Edmonton, Canada-Like the latter, the rich references
are indicative of the author's care to painstakingly examine the pros and cons of
a statement
*Lecturers at the University of Ilorin.
94
closely, analyse the data consequent upon or leading to that statement before
setting it down for public scrutiny. The interested reader is most certainly likely
to be carried away by the sheer number of notes, footnotes, quotations, and
tabulations, all being relevant. The title of the book may however be considered
an understatement of the author's preoccupations. Even though the author
claims to set out to deal with "some of the organizational and sociolinguistic
aspects of French language aquisition and use in Africa" (Preface p. 1), there is
compelling evidence that he has done much more. Consider his standpoint on
some pedagogical proposals (including his) as contained for example on pages
36, 44 and 73.
On the basis of the fact that accent is an important incontrovertible
index of what constitutes a difference between Central French and African
French, if the latter is assumed to exist, the chapter on the teaching of French
pronunciation in Africa (Chapter 5) is crucial to the assessment of the extent to
which the African student of French has deviated from metropolitan French. As
the author reminds us, segmental as well as suprasegmental parameters are the
bedrock of "the beauty and harmony of French" (p. 98).
According to the author, French of Africa would he satisfactorily said
to exist if, out of the multitude of ‘ethnic speech habits' of the African learners
of French, it is possible to extract what could be described as a common core.
This core would be identified in terms of, not just the lexicon but also the
sociolinguistic environment that shapes and conditions speech generally. Now,
available evidence of the varieties of such ethnic habits, as the author notes, is
still fragmentary, if not partial. This is probably why the book limits compelling
references to West and North Africa, (to the exclusion of say East Africa). Yet it
would be most interesting to know what form French language teaching
assumes in countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and even
Mozambique to mention but a few, for a near-comprehensive picture of the
problem to emerge. While the absence from the book of such corroborative
evidence (apart from the sketch credited to Makouta-Mboukou) is, to be sure,
the result of the limits of documents available to the author, it does mean that
the provision of such evidence represents an urgent task for French language
researchers in Africa. It is indeed when such gaps have heen filled that
Kwofie's laudable attempt to posit a "set of universals" for French language
teaching in Africa could properly assume the status of scientific generalisation.
Language is considered by sociolinguists both as an expression of
shared experience and as a tool for manifesting the culture of the owners/users
of the language i.e. a tool for relating to the environment in which the
experience is rooted. It is in this sense, I think, that Emile Durkheim's
definition of language as "social fact" could be understood. Consequently, the
teaching of French in Africa should, in my opinion, integrate the civilisation,
culture
95
and social history of the language. This, in many parts of Africa, is being done.
If the concern in French Language Teaching in Africa is the content of the
teaching package, and the modalities for conveying this package to the African,
it might be appropriate to include some observations on the role and status of
culture and civilisation of France (commonly called French Civilisation) in the
package.
Several important statements have been made by the author in respect
of the role of linguistics in the whole business of language teaching (Vide p.
23-30). Perhaps the most significant of them bears on the limits of the
discipline called linguistics. Like many before him (and he acknowledges
almost all of them) Kwofie rightly calls for caution in the manner in which we
seek deliverance from linguistics (applied or not) in the matter of language
teaching, and worse still, language learning. Says he "French language
instruction in Africa,... would be at least twenty years behind where it is today
were the doctrine of applied linguistics adhered to rigorously" (p. 37). One
cannot agree with him more. Second is the question of teacher's expectation
from the learner in terms of competence. The point seems to me well made that
it is Utopian to expect absolute mastery of the French language from the
African, since, as observed by Martinet, it is practically impossible for the
native speaker of French to attain such mastery. This statement which, as the
author correctly remarks, is a confirmation of Martinet's position in Le
Franqais Sans Ford, (1969), raises for the sociolinguist the question -of how
much of the language we should expect from the African learner, and of
knowing whether an impressive integration of local resources into Central
French may still not affect our assessment of his competence as long as this
does not drastically interfere with syntax, and on condition that the learner
possesses parallel patterns available in Central French, making diglossic use of
the two sets of patterns. This question, like several others raised in the book, is
an issue in applied linguistics; hence a further justification of the sub-title.
French Language Teaching in Africa is a good reference book in the
sense that it has a very rich bibliography. It should appeal to all students of
French language pedagogy and should rightly whet the appetite of researchers
in the growing field of communicative competence in French as a foreign
language. An important way of getting the message of this book across the
continent is by providing immediately a French version of it.
In a recent article entitled: "Le francais dans tous ses etats" in
"LeFrangais dans le Monde" Août-Septembre 1986 (pp.24-5), Louis-Jean
Calvet reminds us of Emile Coenouvrier's observation, that French in relation
to other languages cannot but keep a status of 'co-habitation'. African
languages, including English as official language in Africa, are members of the
party involved in this 'cohabitation'. Consequently, French language teaching in
Africa
96
cannot but take into account what could he described as the co-. habitation
factor. As the evolution of the French language cannot be divorced from its
trappings in Africa, so does its teaching in Africa rest upon our awareness of
the evolution of teaching methods generally. If today, therefore, we speak of
ecclectic method, tomorrow structuro-global method or the 'methode de grands
groupes' may replace or be included in that method. One wonders in fact if that
tomorrow has not come. The signs are perhaps better captured by Henri Boyer
and Michael Rivers in their Introduction a la didac-tique du franqais, lanqiie
etrangire (Cle international, 1979).
97