Didactique des variétés du français dans l’espace francophone et développement de la compétence interculturelle des apprenants du second cycle de l’enseignement secondaire général au Cameroun

Abstract

Developing Intercultural Competence (IC) of learners is a major concern of the didactics of French in the French-speaking world and more specifically in Cameroon. The French language, in this multliingual and multiethnic country, has been enriched and has taken on other colours. It is in this context that is inscribed our topic entitled: ―The didactics of French varieties in the French-speaking world and development of the intercultural competence of learners in the second cycle of General Secondary Education (GSE) in Cameroon”. This research is born from the observation that the development of learners' intercultural competence is not taken into account in the teaching-learning process of French varieties in the Lower six art class of the GSE in Cameroon. The problem thus arises of the lack of an appropriate didactic strategy with the aim of developing the IC of learners in the Lower six art class. The general objective of our study is to analyze the impact of teaching French varieties on the development of intercultural competence of learners in the Lower six art class in the GSE in Cameroon. This objective is based on the following main hypothesis: the didactics of the varieties of French in Cameroon promotes the development of the intercultural competence of learners of the Lower six art class of the GSE. Referring to Chevallard's didactic transposition, Vygotsky's socioconstructivism and Lado's contrastive approach, we first think that the teaching-learning of phonic, prosodic, lexico-semantic and morphosyntactic varieties promotes intercomprehension, intercultural openness and cultural relativism among learners of the Lower six art class in the GSE in Cameroon. The verification of hypothesis involves the collection of qualitative data in three schools in Yaounde IV. The content analysis of the verbatims obtained through semi-directive interviews with teachers and collective (focus groups) with learners, revealed that more than 60% of our respondents agree on the fact that the teaching practice of these varieties, present in the learners' speeches, promotes the development of intercultural competence. Following the conclusive results of the study, some suggestions were made to the public authorities and teachers. A communicable and reproducible teaching system has been proposed to teachers to improve their practices. The need to set up a dictionary of Cameroonian spoken French would allow a good acquisition of intercultural competence