Despite much research on how multilingual learners view the linguistic properties of language, how they perceive languages as cultural capital has been far less investigated. Drawing on the theories of social cognition, this study explores how multiple foreign language learners' impressions, as a lens to observe their multilingual awareness, are…

Acquisition patterns of irregular verbs by Second and Foreign Language learners of English in Cameroon present remarkable peculiarities that emanate from the country's unique linguistic identity, where French, English and a multiplicity of local languages are spoken. Following on a previous study (see Ngasu Betek 2020) this study documents these…

Attempts to prevent language endangerment seem to have overlooked how families proceed in surrendering the language whose intergenerational transmission is their main responsibility. The present paper envisages language maintenance or loss from the vantage point that beliefs about language are the main referents of language use in the family in…

In this paper, through a personal narrative discourse, I explore the influence and the contribution of my cross-cultural study experience in China on my development as a young researcher. Through the Chinese academic culture, I learned some best practices that I consider essential for the blossoming and development of a student. Nonetheless, I…

In the multilingual environments of Africa, national literacy policies vary in terms of the attention they give to the roles and purposes of local, national and international languages. In the context of the global Sustainable Development Agenda, the instrumental purpose of literacy is often assumed, if not explicitly spelled out. At community…

Cameroon, host to around 280 local languages, two European official languages (English and French) and Pidgin English, has been struggling since the 1960s to achieve official bilingualism for national unity and integration. This policy implies that each citizen should learn and use both official languages. The greatest means to implement this…

Teachers of English in Cameroon are proficient speakers of Cameroon English and their non-native status militates against their usage of Standard British English in the English language classrooms. This makes the attainment of British English thorny and perhaps impossible in Cameroon. Standing on that premise, we were motivated to find out…

The meaning of some phrasal verbs can be guessed from the meanings of the parts (to sit down = sit + down, run after = run + after) and the meaning of some others have to be learned (to put up (a visitor) = accommodate, to hold up = cause delay or try to rob someone) due to their syntactic and semantic complexities. In this regard, the syntactic…

This research endeavour is a major contribution to the current debate on the integration of non-native varieties into the school curriculum in non-native settings. Taking the specific case of Cameroon, this work rests on the solid assumption that the promotion of CamE to the detriment of Standard British English accent is definitely a fallacy. The…

This study draws on the concepts of instrumental and expressive orders to analyse school practice in two Anglophone and two Francophone primary schools in Cameroon, and how micro processes of language socialisation in the schools studied instantiated Anglophone and Francophone education traditions and related to macro processes of systems of…

With much regional variation in Cameroon English, language learning and teaching becomes very much affected in Cameroon. As the same users make use of the various forms of English as the changing circumstances require, it becomes more and more difficult for them to make clear distinctions between the varieties, and somehow all of these varieties…

This contribution assesses in quantitative terms frequent collocates and major senses of "between" and "through" in the corpus of Cameroonian English (CCE), the corpus of East-African (Kenya and Tanzania) English which is part of the International Corpus of English (ICE) project (ICE-EA), and the London Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus…

An analysis of authentic or genuine interactions among Cameroon English speakers reveals that conversational routines in this variety of English differ a good deal from those obtained in other varieties of English, non-native varieties of English inclusive, and more specifically in native varieties of English. This paper looks at "thanking…

A comprehensive study on error analysis was conducted to categorize problematic areas for French-speaking learners of English. "Faux amis" seemed to have been the cause of about 50 percent of the errors analyzed under lexis. Noun, adjective, and verb errors are illustrated. (SW)

This contribution investigates the frequency patterns of the modal verbs as they occur in the one-million-word corpus of Cameroon written English. An analysis of dominant senses of some of the modals is also attempted. I have used results and statistical figures from British and American English (as reported in studies such as Biber et al. 1999…