National Bilingualism Week 2011

Cameroon is one of a few countries in the world that is officially bilingual- English and French are the two official languages and as such Camerooniansare encouraged to be fluent in both languages. The country has 10 regions- 2 Anglophone regions (regions that were colonized by Britain) and 8 francophone. Therefore, there are Anglophones (English speakers) and Francophones (French speakers). Personally, I think that Anglophones are much more inclined to be fluent in both languages (since they are more so forced to be familiar with French because the majority of the population speaks French including the president). And for Francophones, there is this overwhelming thought that English is very difficult to learn and particularly with students, they fall back on the common saying ‘c’est dieu qui donne l’angais’ as an excuse for not trying in English class. To encourage and embrace both languages, Cameroon celebrates National BilingualismWeek and in fact we just celebrated this past week. For this week, there is a lot of emphasis to celebrate and put on all kinds of activities for this week particularly in schools since schools are where Cameroonians would be learning to speak either English or French. This year’s theme was ‘Quality bilingualism, a window to professionalism/Un biliguisme de qualite, une ouverture au professionalisme’

A poster made by a student with the week's theme

In Banyo, the first part of national bilingualism week was to encourage everyone at school to speak English all week long (our school being Francophone, we were to embrace the other language but for example, at the bilingual school, the Anglophone teachers and students were to speak French). Of course this isn’t really easy to carry out, so our school planned all kinds of other activities. We held different competitions for different grades levels. For example, sixieme students could write a poem (in English of course) entitles ‘Cameroon my beloved country’ or terminale students could write a newspaper article of their choice. We also had a poster competition for all students- the best poster to promote bilingualism. Wednesday there was a roundtable discussion held at the Bilingual lycee in which a panel of teachers and other professionals spoke about bilingualism and addressed the theme for the week. Students from all three lycees attended the event.

Roundtable discussion

Some of my students who attended

Then Thursday was the big final celebration at our school. Classes ended early and all students were invited to attend the bilingualism week party. Different students (particularly from English club) presented different things like poems, dances and songs to administration and students. Then at the end, we gave out awards to students and staff such as the ‘Most bilingual student’.

A group dancing for the celebration

I think the week was a bit of a success- at least I think students enjoyed getting out of school early but what student wouldn't enjoy that. There is a still a lot to be done to help people, especially students, speak both languages particularly English- guess that's part of why I'm here though right?