Developing Intercultural Competence through Reading Literary Texts The Case of First Year LMD Students of French at Ouargla University

Abstract

Recent research in English Language Teaching has shown that despite EFL students’ mastery of language, they cannot communicate appropriately with people from other cultures in most of the cases. However, learning any language should not just require linguistic competence, but also intercultural competence through which learners can build skills that enable them to discover cultural differences and raise cultural understanding. It is generally agreed that literary texts may offer opportunities to develop better understanding and create more awareness of other peoples and cultures. The purpose of this study is to show how to raise students’ intercultural competence by reading literary texts in English. In order to do so, the present study proposes the introduction of authentic literary texts through the implement tation of Byram’s (ICC) intercultural communicative competence as a means to develop intercultural awareness. Thus, several extracts from literary texts with different cultural topics were introduced in order to raise the learners’ intercultural competence. To successfully achieve this goal, Byram’s (ICC) strategy is integrated when reading the selected literary texts. The rationale behind dealing with literary texts is because they contain realistic language and full of social and cultural content. In order to affirm this hypothesis, an experiment is conducted. It examines the effectiveness of reading literary texts through ICC strategy that is composed of three principal components: knowledge, skills and attitudes, through these three savoirs, learners can develop their intercultural competence. The experiment is designed in six phases carried out with first year LMD students of French at Ouargla university. In all the six phases, six texts varying from videos, pictures and written texts loaded with different cultural issues are presented followed by six tests which serve as pre-tests. After that, six selected literary texts based on ICC strategy were introduced followed by six post-tests. If there is a noticeable improvement in the learners’ scores throughout the post-tests sessions it may be due to the new method: literary texts and ICC strategy. The experiment is repeated in six phases to confirm the reliability and validity of the method. As a means to test the hypothesis, the SPSS software analyzed the data using T-test and statistical values and calculations. The experiment showed a significant improvement in the testees rate of level of awareness after taking the treatment based on the selected literary texts during the pedagogical intervention courses. After analyzing the data from the perception questionnaire and especially the statistical calculations that the SPSS software has provided and therefore positive quantitative results of the experiment have been revealed. At the end, It is recognized that literary texts could be a valuable source and an appropriate tool for promoting the intercultural competence of learners. And through this study we will suggest some pedagogical implications and recommendations for teachers of English literature to best benefit from the literary text to develop intercultural competence