Texturing the Literary Text to Enhance the Learners’ Critical Analysis of Space as a Discursive Mode of Discourse: The Case of 3rd Year LMD Students at the University of Laghouat

Abstract

Analytical critical thinking is at the core of teaching literature. Teaching of critical thinking is not a discipline in its own; however, the thinking skills can be taught for transfer across academic disciplines through a transdisciplinary texturing of the text. Texturing the text is a critical reading strategy, which implicates the students actively in the interpretation of both, the endophoric as well as the exophoric elements of a discourse, and apply the principle of connectivity in order to interpret the co-dependent elements of the discourse. The transdisciplinary texturing allows the students to interpret space as the semiotic dimension of the discourse of power, considering that critical analysis of space as a semiotic discourse of power is an interdisciplinary enterprise.The research method adopted to conduct the study is a triangular one; it encompasses the descriptive and analytical methods as well as the experimental. The quasi-experimental study adopts the unpaired group design, in order to investigate the effect of the transdisciplinary texturing on the student’s critical thinking. The sample selected for the experiment is a convenience sample designated in a non-random sampling; it includes the first year master students of english at the University of Amar Telidji Laghouat. Data collected from the experiment confirm the hypothesis that the transdisciplinary texturing enhances the learner’s critical thinking. The t-test confirms at 95 % the obtained results significance. In view of the prime objective of a literary class, this strategy, contributes to the shift from the banking model of education towards a more critical approach to studying literature.