| dc.description.abstract | It has become a truism
that effective foreign language learning
is based
on a good
mastery of the mother tongue or the
first language
(
L1
)
, which
, according to this
project,
should be the teaching language
. This basic prerequisite is not always fulfilled
in Cameroon as many students, especially in rural ar
eas,
display
a very poor proficiency
in French or English, which are the
only
official and therefore teaching languages
out
of more than 250 others
. This situation makes teaching and a
bove all learning of
German as
f
o
reign l
anguage
particularly
in those ar
eas of Cameroon a very tough task.
As
a
report on the introduction
of national languages in
the secondary school curricula
initiated in
2008
is still to be made
,
this p
roject investigates
–
under
the framework of
language relativity theory
–
first language
related problems in the acquisition of
language
receptive skill
s
, the state of art in language technology
in general,
its
applicability
and its use
in the learning
process
of German as foreign language in
Cameroon in particular. Furthermore it
focuses
on a
practical example of bilingual
electronic
German
-
Medumba
dic
tionary
basing on the language awareness theory
to
demonstrate that the integration of national languages in the language technology can
play a key role
in at least curbing
the above mentioned
pr
oblems. Th
is
woul
d not only
contribute to enhancing
the learning
process
but
w
ould
also
promote
local languages
thus preventing
them
f
rom
becoming extinct
and
the
foreign language learning in
general
from
play
ing
a role in the
g
lobal
language extinction | en_US |
