Focus on Language Teaching: Discussion Questions and Example Data from Cameroon and Tanzania

In this section of the chapter, we will explore two examples of language as used in instructed language learning. You will also find some helpful discussion questions to encourage your reflexive engagement.

Language Use in the French Language Classroom: Cameroon

Some thirty years after Cameroon gained its independence from France in 1960, U.S. American applied linguist and linguistic anthropologist Leslie C. Moore (1999) used ethnographic methods to interrogate the problematic situation of French language education in Jilvé, a lively rural community in the Mandara Mountains. There, in northern Cameroon she learned that trilingualism and language mixing was the norm, that “productive competence in five or six languages [was] not unusual” (p. 335), and that high levels of French language ability were required for civil service jobs and socioeconomic advancement.In this postcolonial context, French remained empowered as a prestige language. Nevertheless, low student proficiency in French and low rates of student retention persisted—the question was, why?

1. What elements of this teaching and research context bear similarities to other contexts you are familiar with?
2. Have you ever been in a position to teach learners that seem disconnected from the language of study? Why do think that has been the case?

Using semi-structured interviews with adolescent language learners and their families, and informal interviews with educators, students, and other members of the community, Dr. Moore developed an appreciation of beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about local linguistic repertoires. She learned that low student success was directly related to instructional approaches that punished use of other languages (e.g., Fulfulde, Hausa, Kanuri, Mada, Uldeme, Wandala) and contravened multilingual norms of the community. The under-resourced school employed a single French language teacher, who unlike his students, was not from the region and could not understand any local languages. Fearing that he would “lose control of the class”, the teacher enforced a strict French-only classroom by constantly focusing on error correction (even when learners’ utterances were generally intelligible), chastising talk among students, and “made a point of seating children of different ethnic/ linguistic groups together in order to prevent L1 usage and to promote integration of the different groups” (p. 341). In addition:

The use of local languages was punishable by chores, suspension, switching [spanking] with a strip of rubber, or having to kneel for several minutes in front of the class with outstretched arms (p. 341).

Importantly, Dr. Moore’s research took up a descriptivist standpoint, meaning that she was intent upon gaining insight into the existing language situation, rather than performing a critical intervention intended to encourage a shift in language practices. For an example of participatory action research completed through collaboration among applied linguists and language instructors, so as to instigate a positive, student-centered change in language teaching, consider the 2021 study of English language teaching in Oaxaca, Mexico by López-Gopar, Schissel, Leung, and Morales.

Language Use in the Swahili Language Classroom: Tanzania

The now-classic study by Moore (1999) was one of many research studies that informed my own ethnographic research in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania conducted some 15 years later. Through the time I spent with Swahili-language users in Dar es Salaam, I learned about what makes the city a vibrant study abroad context for university learners from countries including Austria, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Italy, Libya, South Korea, and the U.S. As part of this on-site research, I observed and participated in beginning, intermediate, and advanced Swahili language courses for over 200 hours, and recorded semi-structured and informal interviews with numerous educators, learners, and local members of the community.Below, I share interactional language data from a classroom in which I observed, that illustrates local language teaching approaches, as well as concerns about language socialization. In contexts of Swahili-language learning worldwide, it is typical for instructors to be referred to as Mwalimu (Teacher), a term connoting respect. All participants are named using pseudonyms.

As part of a lesson on the cultural relevance and importance of Tanzanian stories, known as hadithi, and oral storytelling (hadithi simulizi), Mwalimu Magdeline encourages her students to consider the structure and content of Swahili stories in relation to stories from their own language communities. In these extracts of talk, the participants in the interaction include the Mwalimu (Mw), an unknown student (S), and multiple Ghanaian students who had studied Swahili at the University of Ghana for a year before their arrival in country—principally, Gladys or ‘G’, and Ivy or ‘I’, as well as Eloise, Felix, and Happiness. Extralinguistic actions and the descriptive delivery of speech are annotated in English.Extract #2 presents a continuation of the discussion, in which the Mwalimu (Mw) asks students about the structure of stories in their language communities—do they begin with an utangulizi (introduction) or call-and-response, as with Swahili-language stories? The Ghanaian students respond by describing similarities with Akan/Twi-language stories and storytelling. In Extract #2, uses of Akan/Twi are annotated in bold typeface.

1. How does the instructor’s decision to focus on oral storytelling compare with earlier concerns in the Kenyan university context (see previous sections of this chapter)? Why might this be significant, particularly with relation to the teaching of Swahili to non-Tanzanians and non-Kenyans?
2. In what ways does Mwalimu Magdeline encourage students to engage their linguistic repertoires in the learning of Swahili? How might this be considered a component of her approach to language socialization?
3. How do these interactions compare to what we know from the context of language teaching in Jilvé, Cameroon, given Moore’s (1999) research?
4. How do the Ghanaian learners respond to the teacher’s inquiry and animate and describe their cultural script for storytelling in the Akan/Twi language and culture?
5. In what ways does the Tanzanian instructor affirmatively respond to the Ghanaian learners? How might this affirmation relate to the concept of decolonization?

Extract #1, “Are there differences between Swahili-language stories and stories from your language communities?”:

Excerpt #2, “What is the structure of stories from your language community?”:

Towards Cultural and Linguistic Reclamation: Language and Decolonization

Transforming the Syllabus in Kenya

When it came to the problematic university course syllabus in Nairobi in 1968, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o chose to collaborate with two other faculty members, Owuor Anyumba and Taban Lo Liyong, to author a statement advocating for an immediate curricular shift. Their brave statement called for inclusion of the study of oral literatures, as well as African languages such as Swahili, in light of the many legacies of settler colonialism in Kenya:

“We reject the primacy of English [British] literature and cultures. The aim, in short, should be to orientate ourselves towards placing Kenya, East Africa and then Africa in the centre [sic]. All other things are to be considered in their relevance to our situation and their contribution towards understanding ourselves” (Ngũgĩ, 1986, p. 94).

The united stance these professors took initiated a complex, multiyear debate and process at the University of Nairobi. The English literature course syllabus would incrementally change, particularly as African-descended faculty became the majority in the Literature Department in 1973, though the debate would continue into the 1980s, at the very least. Key in this process, however, was the momentum and vision gathered through conferences and further coalition-building with local secondary school teachers, as well as university faculty and participants from around the world, including Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda (Ngũgĩ, 1986).Essentially, this collective advocated for inquiry into, and undoing of, the exclusion of Black and African perspectives within educational contexts and curricula. Their efforts amounted to a focus on undoing what applied linguist and theorist Ryuko Kubota (2019) has since identified as epistemological racism, a default impulse toward prioritizing “white Eurocentric assumptions as legitimate knowledge” (2019, p. 7). Whereas epistemology pertains to ways of knowing, the phrase epistemological racism illuminates how racial biases and colonizer mindsets constrain our appreciation of what counts as knowledge or what counts as language, including what methods, manners, and languages of inquiry are legitimate. These biases about knowledge also facilitate narrow expectations and beliefs as to who can merit as a producer of knowledge or language user. Such widespread racism continues to pervade practices of teaching, advising, publishing, citation, tenure review, and conference planning in the related fields of applied linguistics, linguistics, and linguistic anthropology, as recent examinations have shown (e.g., Canagarajah, 2022; Thomas & Bucholtz, 2021; Bhattacharya, Jiang, & Canagarajah, 2020). These issues are particularly acute for less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), such as Swahili, in Western contexts.

Given the large scope of challenges we currently face in reducing and eliminating colonizer mindsets in language-focused teaching and research, it is helpful to return to the successes and limitations of earlier, courageous efforts by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and others in Nairobi, Kenya and elsewhere. Across education worldwide, the course syllabus—as well as the textbook—remains a contested site of socialization through and into language, within the teaching of language, literature, and more (see, for example, Thompson, 2013 on the stereotyping and representation of Swahili-speakers in language textbooks; see Pacansky-Brock, 2020 for discussion of how to transform a syllabus into a friendly, humanizing digital document or “liquid syllabus” website; see also Thomas, 2023, for my liquid syllabus for a university course in Language and Social Justice).

The 1940s through 1970s—the time period during which Kenyan independence was realized—was indeed a particularly turbulent time around the world. This historical period is known as decolonization, in reference to the process of transition to postcolonial [after formal colonialism] forms of governance. But this process was not easy, fast, or without challenges. It is important to engage with the history of “physical” decolonization in order to appreciate where this terminology originates and why it remains symbolic of radical transformation in language education and other arenas. As part of key events leading to decolonization, significant armed resistance and clandestine collaborations by insurgent groups like the Mau Mau of Kenya, succeeded in depleting colonial militaries and antagonizing European settlers. These insurgencies disrupted linguistic imperialism—the dominance of a particular language to the exclusion of other languages. Resistance movements also aimed to disrupt, as Mignolo and Walsh (2018, p. 6) have termed it, “a politics and economy of extractivism that advances the destruction of lands-beings-knowledges.” Such extractivism includes the psychosocial and economic exploitation of the human talents (e.g., labor, languages, cultural knowledges) and natural resources (e.g., rubber, sisal, cacao, cotton, copper, diamonds) that had long contributed to Europe’s imperial wealth.In Kenya alone, the fight for decolonization entailed tremendous suffering, sacrifice, and loss of life for Africans. Colonial suppression of the Mau Mau Rebellion or Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1960), sought to neutralize its organized intellectual and armed resistance to British land seizures, Christian schools and missionization, and widespread labor exploitation. This cost Britain an estimated £55 million, and resulted in as many as 20,000 deaths among Mau Mau resistance fighters, including 1,090 executions by hanging. British brutality also included the detention of at least 1.5 million Kenyans through concentration camps and surveilled villages in a manner that has become known as Britain’s Gulag (Elkins, 2005). As a result, destabilized European regimes gradually and reluctantly relinquished direct and visible political control across many of their imperial colonies in South Asia (e.g., India in 1947), Southeast Asia (e.g., Malaysia in 1957), the Caribbean (e.g., Jamaica in 1962), and Africa (e.g., Ghana in 1957, Cameroon in 1960, Tanzania in 1961, Algeria in 1962, Kenya in 1968, Mozambique in 1975).British losses paved the way for partial African political representation under the colonial regime in Kenya, and eventually political independence and some regained land ownership. Nevertheless, in these newly independent nations colonial influences persisted, not only in how economies remained structured around (and therefore, dependent upon) raw exports to European metropoles, but also in how education systems continued to center European ideals to the exclusion of local languages, histories, and cultural knowledges.

“Sometimes their greatness was presented as one more English gift to the world alongside the bible and the needle [sic],” described Dr. Ngũgĩ (1986, p. 91) critically. “William Shakespeare and Jesus Christ had brought light to darkest Africa.”

Moreover, in Kenyan schools the English language was presented as supposedly universal and applicable across all of human experience and history.

“There was a teacher in our school who used to say that Shakespeare and Jesus used very simple English, until someone pointed out that Jesus spoke Hebrew. The ‘Great Tradition’ of English literature was the great tradition of ‘literature’!” (Ngũgĩ, 1986, p. 91).

During the crucial, early decades of Kenya’s postcolonial development, through the 1980s, Dr. Ngũgĩ and others advocated for the return of lands, in addition to political representation and self-determination in educational, linguistic, and literary pursuits. The legacy of these activists and their intellectual and political groundwork continues to influence new generations of anticolonial and decolonial theorists and changemakers.

Today, more than 40 years later, the struggle continues, even as Kenyans were never outnumbered by European settler populations in the same ways that Indigenous peoples of the Americas were. And while recent land acknowledgment statements such as those presented in this chapter have contributed to greater awareness of the specific Indigenous peoples and communities on whose lands U.S. colleges and universities operate, they have also arguably assisted in encouraging (and linguistically socializing) some people to feel as though a formal statement amounts to adequately redressing colonial harms.

As we work our way toward concluding this chapter, take a moment to consider two additional samples of land acknowledgment statements. Consider, for example, how these statements point to unceded knowledge systems, languages, and cultures—what is the value of these statements to you? What personal and/or collective actions do you think should accompany these land acknowledgments? Would a similar statement be fitting to include on your course syllabus?

Land acknowledgment example #3:

Land acknowledgment example #4:

In their 2021 contribution to online magazine The Conversation, anthropology professors Elisa J. Sobo (San Diego State University), and Michael Lambert and Valerie Lambert (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)—of the Choctaw Nation and East Band of Cherokee Indians, respectively—critique land acknowledgements as often participating in “feel-good public gestures signaling ideological conformity” to performative social justice. The anthropologists observe that use of these discourses often undermines Indigenous sovereignty by “relegate[ing] Indigenous peoples to a mythic past and fail[ing] to acknowledge that they owned the land”. This is because these statements are almost never accompanied by any genuine plans to “give the land back” or funding to repatriate Indigenous remains, for example. Ultimately, these anthropologists advise that land acknowledgments should “trigger uncomfortable conversations versus self-congratulation”, and “must reveal a sincere commitment to respecting and enhancing Indigenous sovereignty.”The input of these Indigenous anthropologists is consistent with insights from the well-circulated 2012 critique “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” by education scholars Eve Tuck (SUNY New Paltz) and K. Wayne Yang (University of California, San Diego). Their argument affirms decolonization as an unsettling act of “bring[ing] about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life” as opposed to a “swappable term for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools” (p. 1-3). Tuck and Yang underscore that “decolonization is not a metonym for social justice” or “a generic term for struggle against oppressive conditions and outcomes” (p. 21).

Concluding Thoughts: Decolonization as Process and Commitment

In the U.S., where I write from, a resurgence in broader awareness of the historical and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous Nations has resulted in a loosely organized, discursive movement to visibly and tangibly acknowledge legacies of domestic colonial abuses and dishonored treaties. As part of this recent discursive turn, land acknowledgments and decolonizing pedagogies have become increasingly popular in the form of email signature bylines, written or video declarations on organization websites, or statements read aloud at the start of college and university meetings and events. Some of these actions are improvised, while others are formally endorsed by leadership; some are devised in partnership with Indigenous stakeholders.In this chapter, I hope to have illustrated how and why a language socialization perspective is helpful in understanding connections between decolonization and language teaching, inclusive of disjunctures among classroom practices and community norms. Language-focused data presented include contexts in the U.S., Kenya, Cameroon, and Tanzania, countries that have experienced significant (and arguably, ongoing) processes of colonization. For example, in the Jilvé, Cameroon context, research by Moore (1999) has provided insight into how to potentially make the teaching of French more effective, and also pointed the way toward more culturally responsive teaching methods. The imposition of French language ideology by an outsider-teacher reproduced colonizing linguistic norms in the school environment, effectively excluding the majority of learners and further alienating them from a language that remains an official language of their country.Over the years, research by applied linguists, linguistic anthropologists, and sociolinguists has shown that language classroom practices, as artifacts of language ideology, may over time lead learners to embrace certain sociocultural and political values (Duff, 2002 in Hungary; Friedman, 2009 in Ukraine), divest from language learning altogether (Moore, 1999 in Cameroon), or create linguistic innovations that bespeak their own identities and priorities (Diao, 2016 in China study abroad; Trentman, 2013 in Egypt study abroad; Rampton, 2007 in Britain; Ibrahim, 1999 in Canada). This is consistent with a view of language as cultural practice and instances of talk as social action (e.g., Duranti, 2005), as well as an understanding of language teaching and learning—and language of instruction—as political acts with the potential to be culturally responsive (e.g., Upor, 2021 in Tanzania; Delesclefs, 2020 in Australia; Makalela, 2017 in South Africa; Brock-Utne, Desai, & Qorro, 2003 in Tanzania and South Africa).

Working together, as researchers and language instructors, we can use insights from the language classroom to make changes to our language socialization practices that: (1) support the success of all learners, and (2) challenge learners and instructors alike to deepen their appreciation of language as a matter of historical, political, and sociocultural importance. As part of this collaborative and co-constructive process, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021, p. 226), Māori educator and scholar, encourages researchers to question their “inherent right to knowledge and truth”, and “go further than simply recognizing personal beliefs and assumptions”. Rather, we must interrogate how epistemological racism and colonizer mindsets govern the very questions we ask, and for whom we engage in research and teaching. Dr. Tuhiwai Smith suggests the following questions as foundational to a decolonizing methodology—I submit that for our focus on language teaching and applied linguistics, her words “research” and “study” can be meaningfully interchanged with “language teaching” and “lesson/course materials”:

• Who defined the research problem?
• For who is this study worthy and relevant? Who says so?
• What knowledge will the community gain from this study?
• What knowledge will the researcher gain from this study?
• What are some likely positive outcomes from this study?
• What are some possible negative outcomes?
• How can the negative outcomes be eliminated?
• To whom is the researcher accountable?
• What processes are in place to support the research, the researched, and the researcher?

With this in mind, I encourage you to consider: What will you include in your course syllabus? Concerns and interests in how to decolonize remain different around the world, particularly as liberatory methods must respond to the multiple ways that colonizing powers cultivate(d) control and influence over other nations worldwide. Let us approach decolonization not as a simple declaration or promise in language teaching, but as a community-engaged process and commitment to continual inquiry aimed at liberating language(s), self, community, and lands.

This classroom example extends from the aforementioned study of Swahili language learning I conducted in Tanzania. Again, Swahili language instructors are typically referred to as Mwalimu (Teacher), a term connoting respect. Pseudonyms are in use for all named participants.Under the advanced-level instruction of Mwalimu Sharifa, university learners of Swahili in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania are each expected to present a summary of an article they have independently chosen to read, and facilitate a discussion in class. On this day, Lea, a student from Austria who studied Swahili for two years at the University of Vienna prior to her arrival in country, is presenting an article published in Fema, a popular and free, bilingual Swahili-English youth magazine circulated locally within Dar es Salaam by Femina Health Information Project (Femina Hip), a nongovernmental organization (NGO). The article entitled, “Kisa Ukosefu wa Vitabu? [Complaint Over the Lack of Books?]” advised its readership of mostly secondary students to become more engaged in their education (Mdee, 2011).^[1]

The article Lea presented in class also quoted a Britain-based NGO, which distributes donated books to Tanzanian schools. That NGO recommended that any book is better than no book, though these would likely be in English. According to the author, readers should ask their teachers for information about what books are included in the course syllabus, and use this information to help each other work around the challenges of not having individual access to these required books.

“Mnavijua vitabu vinavyohitajika kwa muhtasari wa masomo wa sasa? Waulizeni walimu wenu wawapeni taarifa na mjadili jinsi ya kukabiliana na hali ya ukosefu wa vitabu vinavyohitajika. Kwa kufanyakazi pamoja mtasoma vizuri.” (Mdee, 2011, p. 43)
Do you know [the] books that are [included] on the syllabus for your current studies? Ask your teachers to give you [this] information and discuss how to support each other [through] a situation of missing the required books. By working together, you will study well.³

In the extracts of talk below, the participants in the interaction include Lea (L), the Mwalimu (Mw), and a learner from China whose chosen Swahili name is Suleiman (Su) (it is often typical for language learners to choose personal names common within the language’s cultural context). Extralinguistic actions and the descriptive delivery of speech are annotated in both Swahili and English.As the class discusses the Fema article in Extract #3, Lea (the student presenter) invites Mwalimu Sharifa to help contextualize their understanding of Tanzanian education. Mwalimu Sharifa responds by explaining that improving students’ access to books must also be about sourcing books in a language (lugha) they can understand.

In the next and final portion of talk, Extract #4, Mwalimu Sharifa remarks on the fact that Swahili, like English, is a language capable of becoming the language of instruction (lugha ya kufundishia), although this is not yet the case throughout the Tanzanian educational system. Lea follows the Mwalimu’s comment by posing a question to one of her Chinese peers in the class.

Discussion Questions:

1. Use a quick internet search to explore what the language(s) of instruction are in Tanzania, and at which levels of education (e.g., primary, secondary, tertiary/ higher education). What does your search reveal?
2. In what ways does Mwalimu Sharifa’s perspective on the “lack of books” challenge the assertions made in the NGO magazine article (as summarized above)?
3. What is the significance of the question that Lea poses to Suleiman? How does Suleiman’s experience in the Chinese educational system compare with your own experiences in schooling?
4. In your experience, what role do extralinguistic behaviors (e.g., body language) play in the language classroom? For example, how might you interpret the significance of Mwalimu Sharifa’s smile while Lea poses her question to Suleiman?
5. Why might it be important to include explicit discussion of issues of language, power, and/or decolonization in your teaching?
6. How does it expand your perspective on Swahili as a language of research to see portions of these transcripts annotated in Swahili (e.g., extralinguistic behaviors)? How might use of a marginalized language other than English be a language-conscious, decolonizing strategy on the part of the researcher?

Extract #3, “What is the state of schooling here in Tanzania?”:

Extract #4, “The language of instruction has yet to be … Swahili”: