RETHINKING INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING MODEL OF SECONDARY SCHOOL CHINESE LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN CAMEROON

Abstract

Chinese language teaching and learning in Cameroon has developed rapidly. Teaching Chinese as a foreign language in secondary schools in Cameroon requires teachers' professional training. Due to the complexity and challenges of the Chinese language teaching, teachers need to be equipped with the necessary linguistic, didactic, communicative, and cultural competencies. Based on a critical and in-depth analysis of documents, statistical analysis and interviews, this study has analysed the current situation of the initial teacher training (ITT) model for secondary school Chinese language teachers in Cameroon in various aspects, including the training objective, duration, curriculum methods and lecturers. The results of this study show that the initial teacher training of secondary school Chinese language teachers in Cameroon has undergone many steps in its development. At the same time, it faces some challenges such as, the limited number of Chinese language lecturers, outdated training curriculum and insufficient practical courses. To address these issues, the authors made some practical recommendations such as the urgent need to recruit and train more cameroonian lecturers, strengthen and diversify cooperation with other international higher education institutions, follow up on cameroonian students who are studying in China, set up a system which will encourages graduates to come back home after their studies to participate in the country’s development, enrich the training curriculum by revising the current programme, focus more on practical courses and cultural animations and finally set up a micro-teaching programme.