Didactics of French in Burundi

Various studies and research on the communicative skills in French of Burundian secondary school students have found that performance at the end of secondary school is below expectations. What are the reasons for these failures? What are the ways of remediation? This paper proposes some answers. The failure seems to be explained by a teaching of the French language which neither focused on the communicative aspect of the language nor took into account the representations of the latter among learners and their teachers. This has made it possible to identify strategic avenues for greater success in communicating in French with the participation of teachers of non-language subjects: the effective adoption of the communicative approach enriched by various strategies such as pedagogising the learners' writings, cultivating metacognition among the pupils and the negotiation of objectives, identifying obstacles and turning them into objectives as well as multiplying opportunities for the use of French... In this way, French will be a language of social integration, which will reduce the poor representations of which it is the subject of discussion in the schools.