Overcoming EFL Learners‘ Ethnocentric Discourse Through Developing Intercultural Communication Sensitivity The Case of 2nd Year Scientific Stream Students at Saaadaoui Rachid Secondary School in Zoui, Khenchela, Algeria

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to shed light on EFL classroom discourse at the Algerian secondary school level being one of the contexts where foreign ethnicity potentially hinders intercultural communication, and by consequence EFL learning. This study is based upon two main hypotheses. The first states that by enhancing intercultural sensitivity, EFL learners would display an ethnorelative discourse towards ethnic other. The second hypothesis states that EFL learners‘ ethnorelative ideology wStsould legitimate ethnic other‘s non-ideological meaning. Adopting van Dijk‘s model of Ideological Discourse Analysis as well as van Leeuwen‘s Model (2008) of (De) Legitimation, we have two objectives in mind: First, to check potential shift from ethnocentric to ethnorelative ideology as well as to examine how these former would be (de)legitimated. The sample of this study is a group of EFL learners at the Algerian secondary school. The experimental group is represented by the entire number of second year scientific stream classroom at Saadaoui Rachid secondary school in Zoui, Khenchela, Algeria. The analysis of learners‘ written discourse reveals that the first hypothesis is confirmed with one exception. The second hypothesis is confirmed.