Entrepreneurship Education in Interactions in English Terminale and Mastering English (High School), Cameroon EFL/ESL Textbooks: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education in the 21st century has increasingly become an important topic in the field of language teaching. EFL/ESL textbooks, in the process of teaching English, have incorporated, among themes of interest, entrepreneurship, which is helpful to transform students’ environments, improve their socio-economic status, and keep them away from poverty. However, the teaching methodology and the quality of materials selected bear questionable social practices likely to denature textbook designers’ laudable intentions. This paper is a critical discourse analysis of the teaching of entrepreneurship in two selected Cameroon English language textbooks used in the French and English subsystems of education, namely Interactions in English Terminale and Mastering English (High School). It is a sociolinguistic qualitative study which hinges on Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional theoretical paradigm, which holds that discourses are not language-bound but encompass internal features that (re)produce social structures, social practices, and power relations, reinforcing social inequalities and hegemonic ideologies. The findings yielded significant findings, showing that both Interactions in English Terminale and Mastering English textbooks are replications of the political, economic, and social institutions of Cameroon society and inadvertently promote gender discrimination in terms of entrepreneurship representation. The textbooks examined are too idealistic in their entrepreneurial discourses and outcomes. They fail to expose students to the realities of entrepreneurial ventures, thereby depriving them of the risks and challenges faced by the prominent entrepreneurs celebrated in their course books. This study is relevant as it contributes to the improvement of entrepreneurship pedagogy in EFL/ESL textbooks used in Cameroon classrooms while adopting realistic overtones.