Functional foreign language literacy for higher education and research: The case of French in Nigerian universities

Abstract

African nations have always considered the knowledge of each other’s official language, principally English and French, as a means for their scientists to exchange their research work and findings with their counterparts across the linguistic barriers on the continent and in the world, and thereby hasten the pace of national development. Nigerian universities thus began in the early 1970s to teach French as a foreign language to students majoring in other disciplines. This paper conceptualizes this teaching in terms of the objective of giving the students a functional literacy in the foreign language, and examines it in terms of this objective and of how much it has been attained. It goes on to propose French for specific purposes as the strategy for attaining functional literacy in foreign languages by Nigerian scientists and experts in the various fields for the purpose of exchanging research information and enhancing their research.