Teaching the Target Language Culture: A Move towards Scaffolding Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence The Case of Second Year High School Students at Khenchela
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Date
2020
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UNIVERSITY OF ABBES LAGHROUR-KHENCHELA
Abstract
Abstract
The present study aims at investigating the case of integrating culture in the Algerian program of teaching English in The Secondary School, particularly 2nd year curriculum. The study is mainly concerned with the role of culture awareness of both teachers and learners in scaffolding learners' intercultural communicative competence. Accordingly, it examines the methods and educational sources that are used to involve TC in language teaching process. Second, it examines the learners’ attitudes towards the target culture; hence, the effect of learners’ cultural awareness on language learning. Accordingly, the study hypothesizes that if learners are informed enough about the target language culture, they will have a positive attitude towards it and will achieve better concerning language proficiency level, as they enhance their intercultural communicative competence. In order to achieve the research aims and to test the hypothesis that has been suggested the study use two questionnaires, one for the teachers and one for the learners; in addition to the evaluation of cultural content of the English textbook used by 2nd year secondary school learners. The results of evaluation reveal that the Algerian curriculum does not give much importance to the cultural content. And both teachers and learners are aware of the prominent role of culture in language learning process. The problem is that teachers lack of techniques and strategies to teach culture. The questionnaire of teachers reveals that learners are very interested in learning the target culture. Nevertheless, most of learners said that teachers very often deal with cultural aspects and that much. While the textbook evaluation showed that textbook designers focus more on linguistic aspects and overlook the cultural ones.