A Comparative Study of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University Teachers’ Perceptions to their Identities as Language Learners The case of French and English Teachers

Abstract

The foremost target of conducting the current study is to investigate whether there are significant differences between teachers of French and teachers of English in terms of the relationship between their identity and the target language. The hypothesis of this research states that teachers of French would undergo significant differences in terms of identity and the target language if compared to teachers of English due to being exposed to the target culture extensively since French enjoys a special status in the Algerian context. This research follows a cross-sectional methodology to investigate the evolution of teachers‟ representations of French and English imagined communities and their effects on the teachers‟ motivation to learn these languages. The data are collected through interviewing three teachers of French and three teachers of English at Mohammed Seddik Ben YahiaUniversity of Jijel. The analyses of the teachers‟ interviews revealed that the Algerian learners of both English and French undergo the same differences as far as the interconnection between language and identity is concerned. The findings gathered from this study also demonstrated that both teachers of English and French develop very positive representations about the target language communities. This positively affects their language proficiency in the sense that they get highly motivated to learn the target language