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A Study Of The Phonological Features Of Cameroon Francophone English  


Abstract Category: Other Categories
Course / Degree: Doctorat/PhD in English Language
Institution / University: University of Yaounde I, Cameroon
Published in: 2012


Thesis Abstract / Summary:

This study analyses the phonological features of Cameroon Francophone English.
The investigation is carried out on data produced by learners of three different levels of
education to show that French-speaking Cameroonian learners/users speak a stable sub
variety of CamE (Cameroon English) termed CamFE (Cameroon Francophone
English). The cause of some of their phonological difficulties is explained, some rules
that apply to CamFE discussed and formulated, and the list of its consonants and
vowels drawn up.

The first data is made up of some speech produced in oral reading and
conversation by 50 Ghomala-French and 50 Ewondo-French speaking learners, selected
among those who have been learning English for at least six years in secondary school.
These two groups of subjects are used in the preliminary experiment .The difficulties
identified in their speech are then tested on that of 50 French-speaking undergraduate
and postgraduate student teachers of varied mother tongues and 50 postgraduate
bilingual student teachers of the Advanced Teacher Training College Maroua , to better
confirm the various features studied. The undergraduate and postgraduate student
teachers speak the following tongues: Guidar (North Region), Guiziga, Tupuri (Far
North Region), Fulfulde (Adamawa, North Far North Regions), Maka (East Region),
Bassa (Littoral and Centre Regions), Bulu (South Region), Ewondo (Centre Region),
F.f., Yemba (West Region).

Using theories of Contrastive Analysis (CA), Error Analysis (EA) and
Interlanguage (IL), the analysis is done at the level of consonants, consonant clusters,
vowels, word stress, some aspects of connected speech ( weak forms, linking), rhythm
and intonation.

The findings show that, although the subjects speak different mother tongues,
come from different ethnic groups, distant regions, and have different levels of
education, they face almost the same difficulties in various areas of English phonology.
A good proportion of their production is unintelligible and not attested in CamE, e.g.
areas, parents, during [area, paren, dyrin] for RP [rz, prnts, djr], or CamE
[ereas, pernts, duri] . Even if compared to the production of the other groups of
subjects, the bilingual student teachers show some improvement in the realisation of
some consonants (e.g. the marker of the third person singular, the genitive, the
plurals), and some aspects of word stress, maybe because of their intensive
phonetics/phonology courses, on the whole, most aspects of their English pronunciation
are not different from those of other subjects. French may account for many difficulties.
The combined effects of the subjects’ mother tongues and French may be one of the
causes of the problems in word stress. Mother tongue alone, which is traditionally
considered the main cause of difficulties/errors in non-native Englishes, may be mostly
responsible for the difficulties in rhythm and intonation.

The rules discussed and formulated thus apply to all the four groups of subjects
under consideration, and to French-speaking Cameroonian learners/speakers of English
in general. Therefore, it would henceforth not be inappropriate to talk of French-
speaking Cameroonians’ variety of English termed CamFE (Cameroon Francophone
English) alongside CamE. Although CamFE shares some features with CamE and
other world Englishes, it has its hallmarks.

The enormous difficulties learners face derive from the poor management and
teaching of English pronunciation at national and classroom level, since the official
pronunciation syllabus in secondary school competes with the ones proposed in various
textbooks in use. Consequently, this study ends by suggesting some teaching strategies
and proposes an English pronunciation syllabus for Cameroonian Francophone
secondary schools.


Thesis Keywords/Search Tags:
Cameroon francophone english, Cameroon english, phonological features of Cameroon francophone english, phonological features of francophone english

This Thesis Abstract may be cited as follows:
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Submission Details: Thesis Abstract submitted by Gilbert TAGNE SAFOTSO from Cameroon on 28-Jan-2015 10:41.
Abstract has been viewed 2230 times (since 7 Mar 2010).

Gilbert TAGNE SAFOTSO Contact Details: Email: gilbertsafotso@gmail.com



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