Cameroon English Speech: Intelligibility to Some Chinese Speakers of English Living in Cameroon and Pedagogic Concerns

In the recent past, there have been several calls from Cameroonian scholars for the variety of English spoken within the country to be taught in the Cameroonian classroom, arguing strongly that the acquisition and use of Standard British English (SBE) is far-fetched given the socio-pragmatic realities of the context within which the language is learnt (see, for instance, Atechi, 2006; Ngefac, 2010 & 2011). On the same token, there have been doubts whether Cameroon English (CamE) can be regarded as a variety in its own right (see Simo Bobda, 2002). This study set out to investigate the intelligibility of Cameroon English speech to educated Chinese speakers of English living in Cameroon and to examine what implications the findings can have on English Language teaching (ELT) in Cameroon.