English in the Algerian School Context: A Pragmatic View on English as an Object of Study

Abstract

With the idea of classroom interaction in mind and hopes for having a teaching environment where more attention is paid to active and engaging teacher-student and student-student interactive behaviour, attempts have been made by second and foreign-language educators to make changes in classroom practices. A considerable amount of effort and capital has been invested to improve and promote up-to-date teacher-training programs, teaching strategies and the like. New tasks and activities have been introduced to engage students in a sustained oral behaviour, even to the extent of imposing on teachers and students new communicative teaching and learning methods and getting rid of explicit grammar-rule teaching. The study carried out in this dissertation is on classroom interaction in EFL contexts in Algeria. It presents an analysis of teacher talk and student communicative practices in foreign language classrooms. One assumption is that language classrooms are sociolinguistic environments in which interlocutors use various functions of language to establish a communication system. The investigation focuses on the roles that Algerian teachers and learners play in the instructional process, and the impact of these roles on the patterns of interaction and the nature of language use in the classroom. When the secondary English curriculum was introduced, it was hoped that the adoption of the communicative approach would provide students with greater opportunities for meaningful language use than the existing oral-structural approach. It is a reflection on the characteristics of foreign language classrooms that may either facilitate language acquisition or impose constraints on the interlocutors’ verbal behaviour. The study was conducted at two Secondary schools where all the students were studying English as a foreign language. A questionnaire was used for collecting data.