Investigating EFL Learners’ Cultural Awareness through Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Learning a foreign language can be a long hard journey. The four basic skills that the teaching and learning process focuses on are listening, speaking, reading, and writing; yet, one of the most crucial skills, critical thinking, is overlooked.. However, today's learners should be critical analytical thinkers, therefore teaching culture should be an important aspect of EFL instruction, as intercultural communicative competency (ICC) is one of the most important goals of foreign language teaching. Because ICC is based on cross-cultural communication, it necessitates learning a language via its culture in order to develop intercultural awareness. As a result, the current study investigates the importance of incorporating within the curriculum of EFL students the concept of Critical Discourse Analysis, henceforth CDA. Focusing on CDA as a module, it can help enhancing the students’ cultural awareness. In order to conduct this study, the researcher used the questionnaire to collect the required quantitative data. The analysis and results of this study indicate that the EFL teachers at the University of Mostaganem acknowledge the importance of CDA in enhancing students cultural awareness, also they admit that EFL masters’ curriculum lack integration of topics related to the target culture. Moreover, teachers seem to be well aware about the necessity of including CDA to all EFL master specialties.