The Acquisition of Textual Cohesion in French as a Foreign Language by Secondary School Students in Kenya

Abstract

The acquisition of the skill of writing always takes place in a given language and in a precise context. Learning to write in one's mother tongue is very different from learning to write in a foreign language. This article brings to light the experiences of Kenyan secondary school students who are in their third year (200 hours) of learning French as a foreign language. The studied group already possesses good writing and oral skills in three languages: English, Kiswahili and the mother-tongue (vernacular). In a corpus of narrative texts collected among students of two secondary schools in Nairobi, we analyze the use of markers of nominal cohesion (anaphors). With due attention to the context of learning we also consider the influence of other languages on this learning process and (we) have made some pedagogical observations/recommendations on the basis of our findings.


Humanities Review Journal Vol.3(2) 2003: 36-57