Teachers’ Intercultural Awareness in Teaching The Reading skill.

Abstract

The current study attempts to investigate how teachers' understanding of different cultures can affect their students' reading abilities. It seeks to determine whether teachers prioritize intercultural understanding and if it is developed through teaching reading. To achieve this, three research questions are raised to: investigate the importance of intercultural awareness, to determine the contribution of intercultural awareness on the students’ performance as well as to decide whether this impact is a positive or a negative one. In order to answer the questions, a mixed descriptive method is used. Where a questionnaire is administered to sixty students of English at the department of foreign languages, University of Mila, and an interview is conducted with eight teachers; six of them are teachers of culture and only two teachers who teach different modules outside Algeria (Qatar’s University). The main findings of the research reveal that teachers' intercultural awareness has a positive impact on their students' reading performance, and that teaching reading also improves their overall performance. Based on the results, the study provides recommendations for teachers, students and future research on the effect of teachers’ intercultural awareness on teaching reading. In summary, this study investigates the impact of teachers' intercultural awareness on their students' reading performance. It aims to determine if teachers prioritize intercultural understanding and if it is developed through teaching reading.