Language instructional policy in Cameroon/Africa has always marginalised indigenous instructional approach, bringing the imported methods to the centre. No wonder why instructional policy in Cameroon has over the years evolved from the structural classical method through the objective-based and, currently, the competency-based approach, which are predominantly foreign. Such policy devalues the local pedagogy as instruction is not contextualised towards local realities leaving the impression that African culture has nothing good to display regarding pedagogy, which is not valid; given that oral traditional strategy existed before Western colonisation. Therefore, valorisation and reconstruction of local instructional approach is needed, which this study provides at the basic education level in Cameroon by checking teachers’ and learners’ perspicacity towards using the oral tradition during language instruction and its utilisation by instructors at the Basic Education level in Cameroon with focus on some Primary Schools in Bamenda. Exploiting a mixed method approach, data was collected from a randomly selected sample population of 210 pupils and 32 teachers from the target population using interviews, questionnaires and observation. Underpinning the study within the frameworks of Social Learning and Sociocultural theories findings were made such as; teachers/ learners express positive/encouraging perspicacity about implementing oral traditional methods in teaching indigenous languages at the target level despite their limited utilisation of the said method by instructors, which is not backed by policy. Following the findings, the integration of oral traditional strategies into language instruction and the adjustment of policy to accommodate Indigenous pedagogy at the basic education level are recommended.
Keywords: Oral tradition, indigenous language instructional policy, perspicacity, reconstruction, revalorisation
