The Digital Environment and English Didactics in the Age of COVID-19 in Public Secondary Schools in Cameroon

Mbeh Adolph Tanyi^1,

¹Department of Curriculum and Evaluation, Faculty of Education, University of Yaoundé I, Yaoundé, Cameroon

Cite this paper:
Mbeh Adolph Tanyi. The Digital Environment and English Didactics in the Age of COVID-19 in Public Secondary Schools in Cameroon. American Journal of Educational Research. 2022; 10(1):54-64. doi: 10.12691/education-10-1-6

Abstract

The presidential declaration in 2001 on the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in primary and secondary schools in cameroon constitute a major milestone for it is used in the teaching-learning process. This immediately provoked others, such as the World Bank’s cyber education initiative in 2001, and the development of a National ICT policy for the country in 2007 Tchinda (2007). Despite these efforts, it effective presence in the teaching-learning of English Language in particular is lagging. This situation worsened on the advent of the Corona Virus which halted schooling all over the world and later imposed digital education as the new order. This paper investigates the extent to which the digital environment has been prepared to render the teaching-learning of English Language effective in times of crisis like COVID-19. The digital environment is understood in this study as the possession of hardware gadgets, knowledge of, and usability of education software, skills for usage, availability of a steady and high speed internet. The study used the survey research design. 150 English language teachers were randomly selected from public secondary schools in Yaounde. A four modality likert scaled questionnaire was used for data collection, and the Pearson’s correlation was used to verify measure the degree of relation between the digital environment and English didactics. The results revealed that the digital environment was ill-prepared to ensure effective learning in times of crisis like covid-19. Recommendations have been made to authorities and teachers to prepare the digital environment with the appropriate ingredients.

Keywords:
Digital environment COVID-19 English Didactics Effective learning ICT

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