Students’ Perspectives toward the Use of the Short Story to Teach Multiculturalism.

Abstract

The main objectives of teaching literature through literary texts are to assist the students of English as a foreign language to understand the target culture and to improve their skills and vocabulary. Thus, EFL literature teachers are increasingly using short stories as a main teaching tool. Short stories encourage students to be more culturally tolerant and to broaden their interests and knowledge of diverse aspects of various cultures. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate students‘ perspectives toward the use of the short story to teach multiculturalism. Furthermore, the focus of this research is to acknowledge the significance of short stories as one of the most effective tools for expanding EFL students' knowledge of cultural diversity, enhancing their multicultural awareness and to examine their general attitudes and perspectives toward learning about multiculturalism through the use of the short story. The study aims to answer one question: what are the perspectives of first-year students at Abdelhafid Boussouf University Center toward the use of the short story to teach multiculturalism? In order to meet the study's objectives and to address this question, a descriptive method was opted for in the present study. To gather the needed data, one questionnaire is administered to one hundred (100) first-year EFL students, and another one is administered to eleven (11) teachers at the Department of Foreign Languages at Abdelhafid Boussouf University Center. The obtained results reveal that there is a high level of understanding about the importance of incorporating literature to increase students' cultural knowledge and that both teachers and students held positive attitudes towards using short stories as one of the effective remedial tools in teaching multiculturalism. The study highly recommends the integration of literary genres like short stories to increase multicultural awareness among learners. Finally, the research yielded several recommendations and pedagogical suggestions for further studies.