Browsing by Author "Sellami, Amina"

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Cultivating EFL students’ intercultural communicative competence through cultural memes analysis : the case of third year students at the department of english, theuniversity of Guelma
(Université M'Hamed Bougara Boumerdès : Faculté des lettres et des langues, 2025) Sellami, Amina; Meftah, Yazid
At the dawn of the 21st century, intercultural competence is stressed more than ever before. Notwithstanding, intercultural education is found to be scarcely introduced to third year EFL learners at Guelma University, Algeria. Therefore, this research aims to cultivate Guelma University third year EFL learners' intercultural communicative competence through cultural memes analysis using multimodal discourse analysis. To attain this goal, quasi-experimental and mixed-methods designs were adopted. Two questionnaires were administered to EFL teachers and third year students at Guelma University as situational and needs assessment tools. Findings from the questionnaires revealed the absence of intercultural education in the aforementioned setting, students' low intercultural competence, and their positive attitudes towards memes-based learning. A quasi-experiment with two intact groups of third year EFL students at Guelma University was carried out. The quantitative findings from the pretest-posttests of the experiment using the Mann Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed-ranks tests revealed that using cultural memes analysis has contributed to enhancing students' intercultural communicative competence in oral classes. A significant difference of p=0.00> 0.05 in favour of the experimental group, in contrast to the control one, was found. The qualitative findings from the experiment's classroom discussions, observation, students' reflection journals, and focus group discussion revealed that all dimensions of intercultural communicative competence, namely, knowledge, attitudes, skills and critical cultural awareness were cultivated. The treatment also revealed that memes-based learning increases participation, boosts motivation, and reduces anxiety and boredom. Eventually, the study outlined some pedagogical implications and recommendations to ameliorate intercultural education and memes-based learning in the Algerian EFL classes
Incorporating Memes in the Algerian EFL Classroom: Possible Aspirations and Impediments
(Ecole normale supérieure de Bouzaréah, 2024-03-31) Sellami, Amina; Meftah, Yazid
Over the last few years, growing attentiveness towards modernizing ELT practices in Algeria has been considered. Nowadays’ learners bring to the classroom different needs and preferences which cannot be easily satisfied through traditional pedagogies, instead, more creative teaching practices are desired. This study, therefore, is an attempt to probe Algerian EFL teachers’ attitudes towards the possibility of incorporating memes-based learning in their EFL classroom. Also, it sheds light on the potential merits and possible challenges teachers might face when using memes. To attain these aims, an online questionnaire was administered to 41 random Algerian university teachers of English. The findings revealed that the participants have positive attitudes towards memes-based learning. They assumed that using memes may engage learners, lower their affective domains, and motivate them, even though they are hard to collect, understand, and time-consuming. Based on the findings, some practical implications for implementing memes-based learning in Algeria are suggested.
Moving Beyond Essentialism: Cultivating EFL Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence through a Non-Essentialist Paradigm of Culture
(Université de Tamenghasset, 2024) Sellami, Amina
The pace of change in today’s globalized world is unprecedented. Boundaries between nations and cultures are increasingly blurred. This change requires resilient and adaptable individuals with a heightened awareness of global dynamics. Thus, foreign language education has shifted attention from traditional pedagogies promoting linguistic competence to pedagogies training learners to be intercultural competent communicators. Nonetheless, there is a hot debate on which paradigm of culture to adopt when cultivating EFL learners’ intercultural competence: the essentialist or non-essentialist paradigm. This paper is then an attempt to explore the suitable cultural paradigm for promoting intercultural communicative competence in EFL settings. Consequently, it is found that an intercultural pedagogy demands a non-essentialist paradigm which views culture as a dynamic, complex, and fluid entity, unlike the essentialist view which delimits culture to its national boundaries causing national banalism, stereotypes, and generalizations.