The Relationship between Algerian EFL Learners’ Proficiency in English and the Development of their Cultural identity

Abstract

The study at hand was conducted for the sake of investigating the relationship between Algerian EFL learners’ proficiency in English and the development of their cultural identity in terms of gender, language, and religious beliefs. To meet this objective, a hypothesis was formulated stating that there is a positive relationship between the two variables. To this end, a language proficiency test was developed on the example of the Cambridge Certificate Tests for English learners to check the level of the participants’ proficiency in English. Together with a cultural identity questionnaire which was developed to check the level of learner’s cultural identity .These two data gathering tools were administered to a randomly chosen sample of fifty two (52) Master one students of English at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University- Jijel. After analyzing and comparing the data gathered by means of these research tools, the researchers came to conclude that that there is a positive relationship between these two variables: the higher the level of student’s proficiency the more open they are to the western culture and vice versa ,except in terms of their religious beliefs. Therefore, it can be perfectly clear that the research hypothesis was confirmed for both the identifiers of gender and language, but it was rejected on the part of religious beliefs. Finally, the findings of the present study serve as grooming ground for future research to further dive into the relationship that exist between language proficiency and cultural identify in general ,and in the Algerian context in particular.