@univ-oran2.dz
Department of English-Faculty of Foreign Languages
University of Oran2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed
Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory, General Arts and Humanities, Religious studies
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Safia BENSAAD and Ouahmiche GHANİA
Cognizance Research Associates
Promoting students’ knowledge of the reading process as well as their metacognitive awareness of reading strategies has become a crucial issue of ESP teaching and undoubtedly an obligatory subject in higher education. Relevant to this, the present paper tries to examine Algerian ESP students’ awareness and use of reading strategies, especially while reading academic material in English. The study is realized through the administration of Mokhtari and Sheorey’s (2002) Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) to 100 students enrolled in first year engineering classes at the National Higher School for Hydraulics (ENSH), mainly to find out: (1) frequency of students’ reported use of different reading strategies (Global, Problem-solving and Support reading strategies); (2) difference(s), if any, between female and male students’ reading strategies use; and (3) students reported use of any other strategies which are not included in the SORS. Findings reveal that Algerian ESP students, as medium users of reading strategies in general, tend to use Problem-solving more than other categories of reading strategies; the absence of significant differences between males and females reported use of reading strategies; meanwhile, students report use of some strategies other than those mentioned in Mokhtari and Sheorey’s Survey. Consequently, an adapted version of the SORS is designed to fit the Algerian context of EFL for specific purposes. © 2020 JLLS and the Authors Published by JLLS.
Ziad Khalid and Ouahmiche Ghania
Cognizance Research Associates
The present study revisits the issue of gender positioning within the visual discourse of three Algerian secondary education EFL textbooks. Unlike many similar previous studies, however, the examination of gender representation in this current research is carried out from a theoretician’s as well as a practitioner’s perspective. First, the selected visual corpus was scrutinized for gender bias through critical image analysis. The seven questions in this framework have addressed the major aspects in which bias can be embedded. Second, the perceptions that secondary education EFL teachers have of this issue were surveyed by dint of a self-report questionnaire which was submitted to a conveniently selected sample. The comparative analysis of the results indicate that while the majority of the images display clear signs of bias against females, most teachers hardly view any imbalances between the two genders as far as visual representation is concerned. This mismatch seems arguably related to the fact that gender bias is still considered a peripheral area of interest by the majority of EFL language practitioners.