The writer
“Bonjour, ça va?
Papa où t’es? Où t’es? Où t’es? Pardon my French… pardon mon français”-soloconvos tiktok.
This is a very important video because it highlights the importance of French in West Africa. To begin, Ghana sits at the heart of a predominantly French-speaking sub-region.
We are a full member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, a clear signal that French is central to our national agenda. Yet, a troubling disconnection persists.
Despite years of formal instruction, many Ghanaian students and even university graduates find it difficult to communicate beyond “Bonjour, ça va?” or “Comment tu t’appelles?”.
For a long time, the explanation has been attributed on one hand to rote learning. We blamed an over-emphasis on memorisation at the expense of communication.
On the other hand, which is more anecdotal, many students by perception or verification, associated caning with the “professeurs de français”, eventually extinguishing their love for the language.
Well, maybe we could spare those teachers a bit because Ghana, for lack of inadequate teachers since time immemorial, helped itself out with those from nearby Francophone countries who came in with little English and many a time zero indigenous language background for purposes of alternance codique.
Could we completely chastise these facilitators when the genesis of the didactics of French as a foreign language stressed correcting the child with some strokes in the palm?
But that argument no longer fully holds. The truth is more complex and more uncomfortable.
It’s Not the Syllabus
The French language syllabus in Ghana has already undergone significant reforms. It now emphasises practical usage, communicative competence, and real-life interaction.
In principle, our students are expected not just to learn French, but to use it, to speak, to respond, and to negotiate meaning.
The senior high school graduate should be in the position to lead a francophone friend to a “waakye” joint, mediate with the vendor for choices of egg, macaroni, salade, and fish.
The graduate of health information management will have no excuse not to understand and collect basic information from a confused francophone patient.
How about the one who specialised in the language? The ease of interaction and quick reflexes will suit them.
So, the question must be asked: If the curriculum has evolved, why are the outcomes lagging like a naïve child chasing the setting sun?
Have we modernized the syllabus on paper but left the actual classroom in a time capsule? Are we lacking the audio-visual tools and digital “scaffolds” that make language acquisition meaningful?
Or is there a deeper challenge, a “complex educational dilemma” that teachers must walk between following strict exam rules and fostering the emotional confidence a student needs to speak a new language?
The “Passive Learner” and the Classroom Walls
Language does not thrive in isolation. We are currently witnessing what experts call the “Participation without proficiency dilemma.”
This occurs when a student possesses neatly arranged textbooks and an updated syllabus but lacks the “urgency” or the environment to actually live the language.
When French is confined strictly to a 40-minute period with hundreds of students sitting rigidly in rows and columns, the obvious answers hit us right in the face. How many out of these two scores can be assigned to individuals to reflect?
How do we form groups for a collective knowledge construction to make them social organisms? Can we really tame interaction in a language classroom? It becomes a theoretical marathon rather than a functional tool.
If students cannot speak after years of study, we must stop blaming the “plan” and start questioning how that plan is executed.
We need to move from seeing French instruction as a mere checklist of grammar rules and start seeing it as magic key to opening doors.
A student may spend hours conjugating verbs, but without “psychological safety” the freedom to make mistakes and experiment without fear that is those structures remain locked in their head. Who is explaining to the “apprenant” that it is very normal that her mother tongue has a greater influence on how she will sound in the foreign language she’s mastering?
We need to commend efforts and allay students’ fear of making errors and emphasise real life interaction.
After all, the learning of French no longer seeks phonetic perfection like methods that once forcefully refined learners into choristers adjusting their lips for musical harmony. We have modernized our goals, but have we modernised our support systems?
A Call to Action: Joining the Conversation
Addressing this linguistic gap is not just an academic concern; it is a strategic one. Language is access. It is mobility. It is participation. Without it, Ghana risks unintentional isolation within a region that is making headway without its star.
To bridge the gap, we need a collective shift:
To parents, you are the first influencers. Normalise exposure. Let the children hear French in the home through music, cartoons, and simple phrases. Make the language “sound” like the tele novellas, the Kumkum bhagyas, the morning devotions, before it “looks” like a school subject.
To our teachers, embrace the communicative intent already embedded in your syllabus. Create classrooms that are safe spaces for “imperfect” French, leveraging the art of teaching within you. Focus on engagement and the “Why” of learning as much as the content.
And to our policymakers, documentation is not implementation. Match curriculum reforms with real-world resources, continuous professional development that does not replicate language classrooms elsewhere but rather those right here, and monitoring mechanisms that prioritize oral fluency over written test scores.
To us as a society, we must normalise French in our media, our markets, and our youth culture. The engagement we have with our smartphones, akin to the peace Ghana enjoys, has equally important content in French available on our favorite social media platforms.
Entertainment, fashion, sports, culinary arts, etc. For nomophobia without purpose is equivalent to annihilation. Let’s stop treating it as a foreign “requirement” and start embracing it as part of our West African identity.
The message from that TikTok video is clear: French is not waiting to be discovered, it is already here, already dominant, and already shaping the opportunities across our borders.
French is already speaking all around us, it is in our trade, at our borders, and in our regional boardrooms.
One might not believe that the Kente and fugu weavers, as well as the “chawchaw” fabricator can achieve substantial gains if they record themselves and achieve viral reach and articulate “ce boubou est bon marché, ceci est d’une qualité rare, ça vous donne une allure de prince”. The real question is no longer whether we can hear it, but whether Ghana is finally ready to respond.
“French is no longer knocking at Ghana’s door; it is already speaking in the four walls of our rooms. The real question is whether we are ready to participate in this evolving dialogue.”
By Maame Ama Boadiwaa, Lecturer, Department of Communication Studies, University of Professional Studies, Accra
