ELT in the Post-colony: Exploring the Mirage of the Competency Based Language Teaching in Cameroon

Abstract

The age of discovery was characterised by migration to different parts of the world in order to explore, conquer, exploit, create empires and enrich the migrating populations. Today, migration especially from African countries, is aimed at getting to greener pastures but paradoxically most migrants end up into newer forms of slavery. Migration into slavery in this paper is intellectual migration into some novel western pedagogical concepts and practices that have transformed and ensnared some English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners into practices of enslavement. The paper set out to examine the perception, attitudes and practices of Cameroonian English language teachers vis-a-vis the Competency Based Approach (CBA) to ELT. The research was done within the frameworks of post-methods pedagogy and translinguistics. With the aid of the questionnaire and interview, the study revealed that ELT stakeholders in the post colony of Cameroon have migrated into, and uncritically adopted pedagogical concepts and practices that have lured them into enslavement in curricular practices, which have turned out to be a mirage to them. The findings also demonstrated that ELT practitioners in Cameroon tend to be helpless imbibers of Western theories; and they theorise what they do not practise and instead practise what they do not theorise.