MOUAS, Samia (2019) Integrating Intercultural Awareness through Idioms Processing The Case of Master One Students at the Department of English, University of Batna. Doctoral thesis, Université de Batna 2.
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Abstract
This thesis bears evidence to the growing concern for an integrated approach of culture in English as a foreign language (EFL) education. That culture is a major component of language learning is uncontroversial and its importance is universally recognized; nonetheless, a consensus on how it should be integrated into language instruction has not reached an agreement yet. In recent years, Cognitive Linguistics (CL) and Cultural Linguistics have established themselves as viable approaches to analyse linguistic realisations of abstract concepts from a cultural view in order to verify the hypothesis that lexis, vocabulary and figurative language cannot be properly interpreted without taking into consideration their underlying cultural background. This work arose out of a long-standing desire to bring together recent research and fieldwork in the two aforementioned fields, breaking away from conventional culture teaching and learning methods. The research described in this thesis reports on a three-month mixed method design case study, carried out in the Department of English at Batna 2 University during the 2016-2017 academic year; investigating the potential of idioms processing to develop Master One students’ intercultural awareness (ICA). This thesis is underpinned by the assumption that idioms motivated by conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy and conventional knowledge (from the Cognitive- Cultural Linguistics views) may provide valuable insights into how the processes involved in them are conceptualised and reflect aspects of cultures from which they emerge. To that end, it was hypothesized that EFL Master One students would develop their ICA through processing of idioms. Adopting a quasi-experimental -pre and post-test design- with two groups of 40 students each, the research was carried out to bring about suitable answers to the research questions reflected in this study. Both quantitative (QUAN) and qualitative (QUAL) analyses were applied to the collected data. After the end of the treatment, the QUAN descriptive and inferential statistics and an independent-sample t-test were used for data analysis. The results obtained indicated that subjects in the EG performed at a statistically significant level in terms of intercultural knowledge, positive attitudes towards their language and the English language cultures and skills measured by the ICA Inventory Scale, when compared to the CG. Additionally, and in order to cross-validated the results of the subjects’ likert-scaled responses with the opinions they had about the intervention, 10students from the EG were interviewed. The QUAL findings demonstrated that most learners had positive perception on this learning experience, became more aware of the importance of integrating ICA in EFL classes and acknowledged the value of idioms in developing their knowledge of and positive attitudes towards their culture and the target language culture
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Culture, intercultural awareness, idioms, conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy, conventional knowledge, Cognitive Linguistics, Cultural Linguistics, cultural conceptualisation. |
| Subjects: | Lettres et langues étrangères > Langue anglaise |
| Divisions: | Faculté des lettres et langues étrangères > Département de langue anglaise |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2019 10:09 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2019 10:09 |
| URI: | http://eprints.univ-batna2.dz/id/eprint/1747 |
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