Der Beitrag der Computerlinguistik in der Förderung des deutsc hen als Fremdsprache in Kamerun Das Beispiel eines elektronischen Wörterbuchs Deutsch- Medumba

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