Exploring students’ intercultural awareness with an intercultural approach to ELT in Algeria

The recent trends in foreign language teaching influenced widely by the process of globalisation, interculturalism, and global flows are leaning towards adopting an intercultural perspective to help in developing students who are global citizens able to effectively function across diverse boundaries. Researchers call for an intercultural learning and teaching perspective that would foster and increase intercultural awareness and understanding. The present research aims to unfold whether including the cultural dimension in foreign language instruction can help in developing students’ intercultural awareness. In doing so, a cultural pedagogical experiment was designed and conducted for the period of 1 year at the level of the university. Data were collected qualitatively and analysed thematically. Results help in drawing important implications for educational institutions, foreign language teachers, and syllabus designers about the importance and effectiveness of perceiving foreign language instruction as a social activity that can nurture interculturally aware and competent individuals. Keywords: ELT, intercultural awareness, knowledge, pedagogy, intercultural understanding