The Pronunciation Component in Teaching EAP in Cameroonian Universities: Some Proposals

Abstract

In Cameroonian universities, EAP is generally seen as a marginalised unit, and its teaching is abandoned to part-time secondary school teachers, or doctorate students who have little or no knowledge of the subject. Most of the time, these teachers do not know the real objective of the subject, and do not master it. In some universities, each teacher designs a programme for his / her classes, and where there is a faculty programme, it is usually inadequate (Safotso 2011). With the development of so many non-native varieties of English around the world, one crucial problem of EAP teaching is now that of pronunciation. The student who undertakes university studies will be exposed to several accents of English from local and/or native speaker lecturers. Some students will even leave their home countries to study in English-speaking ones. This paper aims to show the weaknesses of the pronunciation component of EAP programmes so far offered in Cameroonian universities. It concludes by making some proposals for a better impact of this subject on other academic subjects.

Keywords: EAP, pronunciation, programme, speaking, accents