Attitudes of Chadians Studying in Cameroon Towards English

Abstract

The elimination of barriers between many states in the world today has led to significant movements of people from one place to another, especially for educational motives or in search of greener pastures. Such movements often lead to the encounter with new languages and cultures, as it is the case with Chadians who move to Cameroon for further studies. Given the bilingual nature of Cameroon, which is their host nation, most of these students not only get to meet English, which is one of the official languages, but are also bound to study it so as to guarantee success in their studies. This study investigates the attitudes of some Chadians studying in the University of Yaoundé I towards English. The informants for the study are made up of 100 students drawn from four different departments of the Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences. The results from the analysis of the data reveal that 60% of the students show negative attitudes towards English, given that it is somewhat new to them and 40% of the students had a positive attitude towards English, especially because they consider the importance of English in the world today and also because they use it for examination purposes.