An Evaluation of The Effectiveness of The Third Year Secondary School Textbook New Prospects in Fostering a Cross-Cultural Awareness Among Algerian Learners Concerning The Issue of Family Values.

Abstract

The present study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the Algerian third year secondary school „textbook in articulating the issue of family values from a cross cultural perspective. To this end, the data were gathered via two research tools, a checklist and a teachers „questionnaire. The questionnaire was administrated to 35 secondary school teachers in jijel. The checklist-based analysis has revealed that despite the authors attempt to deal with issues related to both first and target language cultures, these issues have not been addressed in an adequate way that would allow the development the type of cross-cultural awareness advocated by the proponents of the interconnection between language and culture teaching in applied linguistics. Moreover, the themes and the dialogues do not seem to reflect a principled methodology geared towards articulating the relationship between language and culture .Furthermore, unit six “we are a family” does not address the issue of family values, but rather deals with feelings and emotions so as to showcase that these aspects are shared by all human cultures. However, the cultural representations in question are far from living up to the challenge of addressing the connection between language and culture so as to impact positively language learning. The results of the teachers „questionnaire have largely confirmed these findings.