A Survey Analysis On Elementary Chinese Textbooks In Cameroon's Secondary Schools

In recent years,"Chinese fever" has warmed up on a global scale.African countries as a whole and Cameroon in particular has become more interested in learning Chinese.The number of Chinese students in Cameroon has also recorded a reasonable increase since then.Cameroon's Ministry of Secondary Education implemented Chinese language as on of it's optional courses in the year 2012.Since then it has been recognized as one of the country's foreign languages,together with Spanish,German,Arab and Italian.In 2015,the first Cameroonian native Chinese textbook "Hello Cameroon" was published for Chinese learners in Cameroon's Secondary Schools.So far this textbook has 4 volumes.Based on the basic requirements of the Chinese language teaching syllabus implemented by Cameroon's Ministry of Secondary Education and the status-quo of teaching and learning Chinese in Cameroon's secondary schools,this paper chose the second volume of "Hello Cameroon" as it's research object.I distributed and collected over 100 valid questionnaires at MBALLA ? Bilingual Secondary School and ESSOS Bilingual High School in Yaounde,Cameroon.? also designed a teacher's interview outline online and interviewed 22 native Cameroonian Chinese teachers.Through questionnaires and interviews,I found out that although the second volume of"Hello Cameroon" is a native Cameroonian Chinese textbook,it's content contains some problems of contextualization.The main problem is there is a considerable difference between this texbook's teaching content and the teaching syllabus issued by Cameroon's Ministry of Secondary Education.Some of the themes proposed in this volume are inconsistent with the themes proposed by the syllabus,this volume also lacks some of the themes proposed by the teaching syllabus,this volume's grammar teaching content is completely different from that proposed by the syllabus,the content of this book is voluminous hence requires more time to complete it's lessons.Moreover,this volume has some problems at the level of it's conception,especially at the level of it's scientific contents and principles.In view of this,this paper puts forward some suggestions for the revision of the second volume of "Hello Cameroon.It also puts forward some suggestions on how to ameliorate the contextualization of Chinese textbooks in Cameroon's Secondary Schools.It also provides some ideas for the conception of contextualized Chinese textbooks for Cameroon's Secondary Schools.