BONHOUR GHANA TELEVISION PROGRAMME LAUNCHED

15.10.08
Bonjour Ghana (edu)
Story: Caroline Boateng
“Bonjour Ghana,” a new television magazine programme has been launched to begin airing on the Children’s Channel of Ghana Television (GTV) every Saturday at 10 a.m.
The programme was conceived of by KAMA productions, and is being sponsored by the French Embassy with support from the Ghana Education Service (GES) and Ghana Television.
The series has various parts, with children learning the French language in a practical way in social and educational settings.
Activities, games and play with music are also used to make the learning of the French language practical and easy.
At the launch of the programme in Accra today, the Director of the Teacher Education Directorate (TED) of the GES, Mr Victor Mantey, said efforts at making the French language compulsory had been met with challenges.
One of the challenges was the inadequate number of teachers to teach the language, but that was being addressed by all partners, he added.
Mr Mantey, therefore, recommended the programme for all, saying that it was going to make the learning and teaching of French practical and easy.
Testifying of the potential of the programme to help improve the language skills of children, Mr Mantey said he had hesitantly acquired some copies of the programme at the very inception for his ward.
To his surprise, after almost a year of his ward using the material, there was such an improvement that the ward scored a B in the French Language at the Senior High School Certificate Examinations.
Mrs Grace Nyuur, the National Coordinator of the Centre for the Teaching of French or CREF, a network of the ten regional resource centers for the teaching and learning of French language in the country, in her welcoming remarks said the programme sought to disabuse from the minds of all the perception that french was a difficult and mysterious language.
She said the phobia associated with learning the french language would be erased with the progremme.
An official of GTV, Mrs Dinah Amoo, appealed to all to support the airing of the programme and the sustained development of further programmes since television productions were capital intensive.
While commending the French Embassy for their support, urged French corporate organizations in the country to get involved and support the production of the programme.
The producer of “Bonjour Ghana,” Mr Godfred Quansah, said his experience at a Film festival, FESPACO, in Burkina Faso birthed in him the desire to do the series, although he does not speak french.
He said collaborating with members of CREF, other producers and french speakers, he had managed to come out with the programme.
He said the episodes that would air on the national television had elements of French culture, though in a Ghanaian setting, to attract the interest of children to learn the language better.
Mr Bernard Botte, an official of the French Embassy, Mr Bernard Botte, said the programme was designed with input from experts in educative television programmes for the learning of the language.
He said the programme would be instructive not only for children but adults too.
The President of the Ghana Association of French Teachers, Mr Evans Kokroko, expressed appreciation to the french Embassy for supporting the programme and urged the producer to start a programme of distributing the material widely to enable teachers use it effectively in teaching.
19.10.08
DAILY GRAPHIC, MONDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2008 PG 11