Mouloud Mammeri Research Articles

Multilingual practices of Algerian EFL learners in digital environments: A functional approach

The recent academic discourse has been prominently centred on the scrutiny of the intricate relationship between language and emerging technologies. In this regard, the present study sets out to explore the multilingual practices of Algerian EFL learners in digital environments, taking students at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou as a case in point. The study targets three main objectives. First, it attempts to scrutinise the participants’ use of different languages to fulfil different communicative functions. Second, it seeks to bring to light their motives for making choices among their linguistic repertoire. Third, it delves into the utilization of English as a foreign language within virtual environments. This case study draws on a theoretical framework of the sociology of language choice from a functional specialisation perspective (Jacobson, 1960; Halliday et al., 1964; Appel & Muysken, 2005). To this end, the mixed-methods research is adopted. A questionnaire was designed to collect data, which were analysed using descriptive statistical techniques and interpretive analysis. Findings highlight participants’ subconscious language choice across different situations, indicating the transfer of their face-to-face communication skills to virtual contexts. Additionally, the findings suggest that social media platforms have a beneficial effect on the adoption of English within digital learning settings.

Teachers’ Professional Development for ICTs Integration in the Algerian Higher Education: Attitudes and Challenges

One of the latest innovations in the field of education is the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as they are believed to be important potential grounds to sustain education reform efforts. Therefore, the quality of teachers and their continuing professional education remain central to the achievement of quality education. The present paper seeks to unveil EFL University Algerian teachers’ attitudes towards professional development in ICTs integration as well as identifying the main challenges facing them. This study is carried out in an EFL context with eight (8) EFL teachers at the Department of English of Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria. This work relies on the quantitative approach which describes the results developing quantitative data. The measurement tool that is used is a questionnaire which is administered to (8) Eight EFL teachers. The findings of this study reveal that the reciprocal relationship between research and practice is a necessity in teachers’ professional development for ICTs integration. However, teachers face many barriers such as lack of access to quality digital content. To this end, it is recommended that teachers’ professional development in ICTs integration in the Algerian higher education should foster training in the adaptation to the evolution of change of the profession of teachers.

Colonial Trauma: A Study of the Psychic and Political Consequences of Colonial Oppression in Algeria. By Karima Lazali

Karima Lazali’s extraordinary book is undoubtedly a milestone in postcolonial and decolonial studies since the publication of Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre (1961) and his posthumous Écrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté (2015). Lazali offers a comprehensive reading of coloniality in Algeria and of the long-lasting effects which France’s colonial violence and domination (1830–62) had on the subjectivities of the colonized, but also on the post-Independence political order, leading to the Internal War (1992–2000). Lazali’s perspective is based on her psychoanalytic practice located in both Algeria and France. Her methodology appeals to transdisciplinarity (history, literature, anthropology, psychology, sociology) in order to elucidate the blank spaces and ideological blind spots created on both sides of the Mediterranean by coloniality. Lazali exposes the legacy of colonialism and the traumas to which it subjected the population: ‘an unusual psychic phenomenon […]. The clinical psychologist is forced to deal with a history deprived of archives, literally and metaphorically. It is now no longer a question of deconstruction, but one of reconstructing traces that exist outside of memory’ (Colonial Trauma, p. 5). Lazali unseals the Algerian colonial world in its totality and dismantles its binary logic (reflected in France’s and Algeria’s frozen, antithetical attitudes regarding colonialism). She enlists key but often lesser-studied Algerian authors (for example, Jean El-Mouhoub Amrouche, Kamel Daoud, Tahar Djaout, Nabile Farès, Mouloud Feraoun, Wahiba Khiari, Mouloud Mammeri, Yamina Mechakra, Arezki Mellal, Rachid Mimouni, Samir Toumi, Kateb Yacine, Amin Zaoui) to give expression to the blank spaces of historical records, alerting readers ‘to how a text is continuously shaped by its invisible margins’ (p. 7), taking them closer to what has been and continues to be erased by the political order.

Metaphoric proverbs in EFL learners’ translation

Abstract Metaphoric proverbs represent interesting cultural instances of conventional metaphors (Belkhir 2014, 2012). The ubiquity of metaphoric proverbs in language and the problems this phenomenon causes in translation is an issue that requires close attention. Translation aims at providing semantic equivalence between two languages. According to Vinay and Darbelnet (1995), equivalence constitutes the adequate method that should be used by translators when dealing with proverbs. However, no translator can provide perfect translation of a source text due to cultural specificities. The present paper offers a modest report of an experimental study conducted with a group of EFL students who have been taught translation as a subject in a higher education context (Mouloud Mammeri University). A set of English proverbs has been collected to build up the experiment that was administered to the subjects who were asked to translate them into Arabic, then into their first language, Kabyle. The question raised is whether these students are able to translate the proverbs appropriately. The study aims (1) to investigate translation strategies used by EFL learners; and (2) to show how learners’ L1 (Kabyle) and L2 (Arabic) interfere in the translation of English proverbs. The results showed that the more the students were acquainted with proverbs, the more they used equivalence in their translation. Similarly, the lesser they were acquainted with proverbs, the more they used literal translation or paraphrase. In addition, some translations provided by the participants revealed the presence of language interference.

Personification in EFL learners’ academic writing: A cognitive linguistic stance

The paper offers a report of a small-scale corpus investigation into some advanced EFL learners’ use of personification in academic writing within a higher education context (Mouloud Mammeri University). Its main objective is to shed light on the extent of the occurrence of this phenomenon in their writings. The question raised is whether the examination of their dissertations would reveal extensive use of personification. Conceptual Metaphor Theory constitutes the theoretical framework featuring in this research. Relying on the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) (Pragglejaz Group 2007), six master’s dissertations are selected for examination, and a quantitative analysis of the identified metaphorically used words is conducted. The results of the study reveal an overwhelming manifestation of personification. These findings may constitute a small contribution to the field of education, as offering useful data to educational practitioners and researchers.

TRADITION OR MODERNITY: WHICH MODEL FOR THE ALGERIAN NOVEL?

The Algerian novel occupies an important place in the literary world of the French expression. Numerous are the Algerian writers passionned by this way of writing resulting from historical events between Algeria and France. The Algerian author is confused between his traditional society, his roots, his sociocultural environment and the modern one transmitted by the culture of the colon. The reports between tradition and modernity are in the core of the mystery of creation, the act of the creator, indeed, concentrates on heritages but he can always go towards their unforeseen transformations. With a more analytical look, we can state that between both notions, it exists convergent points, this may say that beyond appearances it is impossible to build a tight partition. The tangling of both concepts is revealed in the Algerian novels, for instance, in Kateb yacine, Mouloud Mammeri, Yasmina Khadra, Latifa Ben Mansour et Rachid Mimouni. This is why we have opted for this theme which aimed to: Situate the Algerian novel between these two dichotomies and how the Algerian author apprehends this repport? The present work is based on the study of technics which make the dichotony Tradition/Modernity opposed in time; a cyclicity through a literary creation.

Cognition and Language Learning

This book entitled “Cognition and Language Learning” edited by Sadia Belkhir includes proceedings of the Cognition & Language Learning Symposium held in February 2019 in Mouloud Mammeri University, Tzi Ouzou. In the book, there are studies that take the interdisciplinary approach between Cognitive Linguistics and education and put forward the relation between cognition and language learning. In the studies; issues such as metacognitive awareness on reading narrative texts, vocabulary attrition among multilinguals, the role of MIP in promoting EFL learners’ cognitive ability, perception of phonetic units, vocabulary retention and memorization through the use of online sources, the role of attribution theory in perceptions of success and failure, anxiety and cognitive processing in EFL, the perceptions of code switcing in EFL classes are discussed.

Diplomacy Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary by Elisabeth Kendall and Yehia A. Mohamed (review)

Reviewed by: Diplomacy Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary by Elisabeth Kendall and Yehia A. Mohamed Mouloud Siber Elisabeth Kendall and Yehia A. Mohamed. Diplomacy Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary. Georgetown UP, 2020. 96 p. An Arabic-English dictionary, Diplomatic Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary encompasses most of the specific vocabulary used in diplomatic communication. Each entry begins with Arabic followed by its English translation. In their introduction, the authors acknowledge the growing, even urgent, need for publishing this type of material and follow it with a brief overview of its ten chapters, which are "internally ordered according to semantic field" (1). The first chapter, labeled "General," introduces a list of the principal vocabulary used in diplomacy. Some of these include diplomacy, the international order, principle/doctrine, colonialism, Arab World, The Middle East. This general listing continues in "Concepts and Practices," which is mostly theoretical. It deals with terminology commonly used in political science and philosophy: populism, neo-liberalism, Marxism, racism, utopianism, and others. The authors return to these chapters by dividing the words and expressions among the following chapters based on their lexical fields. "Diplomatic Service and Protocol" breaks away from theory and enumerates terminology mostly connected to diplomatic practice like diplomatic corps, ambassador, chief of protocol, form of address, diplomatic invitation. The "Organizations" chapter lists lexis endemic to inter/national and regional diplomatic organizations and entities and includes generic words like institution, organ, agency. As well, there are more specific terms like United Nations Organization, World Bank, United Nations Children's Fund, Amnesty International, European Union. The fifth chapter is devoted to vocabulary that connects diplomacy to "Elections and Government". It embodies a list of terms and phrases pertaining to government and the electoral process, including election, referendum, candidate, absolute majority, [End Page 231] Parliament. This chapter mostly relates to internal political affairs of countries. The sixth, however, is directly linked to a major objective of diplomacy, namely holding "Negotiations" among countries. It includes an informed list of words and expressions that describe negotiation as a major practice in diplomacy. Among these are negotiations, building consensus, consultation, mediation. "Treaties and Agreements" is allocated to the end-result of negotiations, namely reaching agreements and signing treaties and includes: agreement/treaty, declaration, commercial treaty, Free Trade Agreement, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Geneva Convention. The seventh chapter, "Conflict Resolution and Defense," deals with another result of the diplomatic practice related to implementing peace within and among conflicting countries. It begins with the semantic of field of conflict with vocabulary like armed conflict, war crime, genocide, prisoner of war and moves to terms associated with their resolution like conflict mediation, dispute settlement, disarmament/demilitarization, peace keeping forces and so on. The last two, "Civil Society and Human Rights" and "Globalization and Economic Development" embody vocabulary related to a world where people enjoy fundamental human rights and economic prosperity or suffer the absence thereof. The lexis of the former is related to standards of civility and human rights like civil society, non-profit, volunteerism, human rights, United Nations Human Rights Programme, in contrast to their opposites, like human rights violations and crimes against humanity. "Globalization and Economic Development" includes globalization, global village, free market economy and their counter-parts like anti-globalization, cultural relativism along with words that describe world economic growth. At the end of Diplomacy Arabic, the authors include an Index in English of most of the entries to facilitate its use. The ten chapters offer an exhaustive list of words and expressions commonly used in diplomacy. The audience is not limited [End Page 232] to people who work in this area and "students [and scholars] of international affairs" (1). Reporters, human rights activists, business people, and others, whose practices are closely connected to the Arabspeaking world, can also use it. Since the entries start with Arabic and the Index is in English, Diplomacy Arabic is accessible to both English speakers using or learning Arabic and Arabic speakers using or learning English. It is devoted to communication contexts where relations are negotiated and agreements are reached, so it can help its users to avoid getting "lost in translation". Mouloud Siber Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou Copyright © 2020 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association...

Algerian EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension Skills Across Paper And Screen :, A Sociocultural Approach

Reading comprehension is a complex activity that requires a variety of skills in handling documents. This paper investigates the effects that the reading environment may have on reading comprehension. It aims at comparing reading comprehension skills of urban and rural Algerian EFL students in paper-based and screen-based environments. Accordingly, the leading approach to the raised issue is sociocultural. To accomplish the aim, an experimental reading comprehension test has been conducted at Mouloud Mammeri University. Ninety six Participants living in urban and rural areas participated in the study. Two tests were used to investigate whether their reading comprehension skills are the same or different in paper-based and screen-based environments. The collected data have been analysed by means of inferential statistical analysis. More to the point, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and paired-samples t-tests have been employed to measure the impact of the environment on the participants’ scores. Findings indicate that the reading environment has a significant impact on Algerian EFL students’ reading comprehension. Their reading abilities on paper and on screen are not the same. However, no discrepancy is noticed between participants living in urban or rural areas. This suggests that the urban-rural dichotomy is shallow in the Algerian context in terms of EFL students’ reading skills.

الثقافة الحية لدى مولود معمري

Mouloud Mammeri’s career is characterized by his continuous intention and strong quest to point out what that culture acquired in term of language, literature, and incorporeal legacy of success. And to rise it to the surface founding an identity based on multiplicity in which unity is both stabilized and empowered with the same value of what its way to otherness and dialogue with the other are supported. This essay aims at showing what specifies Mouloud Mammeri’s cultural imagination that would be beneficial for us; a part of his meeting with Tahar Djaout, his outings to the field of research as well as a sample of his novel “The forgotten Hill” (La Colline Oubliee) that may be inserted in the concepts of multiplicity, otherness, and dialogue which give life to a culture and get it gathered.

Assia Djebar: Writing between Land and Language

The death of assia djebar on 7 february 2015 marks the end of an era in literary and world history. The last survivor of the generation of Algerian writers who took up the pen in the mid-1950s as their country embarked on its historic struggle for independence from France, Djebar continued writing long after the deaths of Mouloud Feraoun (1962), Kateb Yacine (1989), Mouloud Mammeri (1989), and Mohammed Dib (2003). With her death, the age of decolonization and African revolution as it resonated in literature seems truly to have come to a close. Djebar was the only woman among the Algerian literary pioneers, and her work, which includes novels, essays, documentary films, and plays, explores, above all, the experience of Algerian women. Challenging official nationalism, these counternarratives tell stories about women's roles in war in which the political doesn't efface the personal and victory doesn't signal the end of suffering or the fading of loss. This oppositional stance was carried even into the rituals observed in the aftermath of her death. Official services conducted at the airport and the Palais de la Culture in Algiers were shadowed and indeed overshadowed by less-formal ceremonies in which family, friends, and members of Algerian women's movements recited poetry and chanted Berber songs.

‘Le Zèbre’/‘Zebra’, a story by Mouloud Mammeri

Abstract ‘Zebra’ is a translation of ‘Le Zèbre’, a short story written by the Francophone Algerian writer Mouloud Mammeri. Even though it was written in 1957, this story is more relevant now than ever. It perfectly describes the plight of Algeria under French colonialism, and the suffering that has persisted even after independence. The violence of the ‘black decade’ of the 1990s and the Kabyle uprisings of the 2000s are evidence of a continuing crisis. The protagonist of ‘Zebra’ represents the quintessence of Maghrebian society torn between tradition and modernity, between past and present, between oral and written traditions, between religion and democracy. In his desperate search for authentic identity, the protagonist is rejected by the Egyptians, imprisoned by the French, accused of spying by the English, and abused by his own compatriots. Mammeri’s story helps us to make sense of the tumultuous history of this region as well as to better understand the roots of the devastating experience of marginalization, a condition that has plagued his native Berber culture for centuries. ‘Zebra’ est la traduction en anglais de la nouvelle ‘Le zèbre’, de l’écrivain algérien, Mouloud Mammeri. Même si cette histoire est écrite en 1957, elle est plus que jamais pertinente aujourd’hui. Elle décrit si bien le contexte d’une Algérie sous le colonialisme français mais qui souffre toujours de ses malheurs même après l’indépendance. La violence de la décennie noire des années 1990 ainsi que les révoltes en Kabylie des années 2000 témoignent justement de cette situation de crise. ‘Le Zèbre’ est la quintessence même de la société maghrébine, tiraillée entre la tradition et la modernité, entre le présent et le passé, entre l’écriture et l’oralité, et entre la religion et la démocratie. Le protagoniste de cette histoire, en recherche de sa vraie identité, se voit rejeté par les Egyptiens, emprisonné par les Français, soupçonné par les Anglais, et enfin maltraité par ses propres compatriotes. Cette nouvelle de Mouloud Mammeri nous permet ainsi de mieux comprendre les soubassements de ce phénomène de marginalisation qui ravage sa culture berbère depuis plusieurs siècles.

La littérature de jeunesse migrante: récits d’immigration de l’Algérie à la France by Anne Schneider (review)

Reviewed by: La littérature de jeunesse migrante: récits d’immigration de l’Algérie à la France by Anne Schneider Sibylle Weingart La littérature de jeunesse migrante: récits d’immigration de l’Algérie à la France [Migrant children’s literature: Immigration narratives from Algeria to France]. By Anne Schneider. Series: Espaces littéraires. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013. 419pages. ISBN 978-2-336-29200-7. With this monograph, the French scholar and vice director of the Charles Perrault Institute, Anne Schneider, presents a seminal work on a neglected theme. The ambivalence of the title is fully intended: “Migrant” can qualify either “children’s literature” or only “children.” Who or what is actually migrating? Are only the (predominantly young) protagonists “migrating” in these stories? Does Schneider focus exclusively on the literary treatment of the experiences and consequences of flight, exile, immigration and emigration between Algeria (and other Maghreb states) and France? Or does she also explore other types of transgressions, imaginary or literary ones? Do the analyzed narratives cross over the blurred boundaries of childhood, youth, and adulthood? Do the literary texts entice readers to rethink the at times arbitrary delimitations between genres, between the so called “national literatures” and “intercultural literature,” or between literature for children, adolescents or adults? Does the potential “literary migration” of texts lead to a new evaluation or new use of these texts and, if so, what are the consequences in society, the publishing landscape or in school? These are some of the questions guiding the study, which is based on a corpus of 175 Francophone works. 116 of these cover a wide spectrum of genres from the realm of children’s and young adult literature, 59 are all-age or adult books. Schneider includes works by Leila Sebbar, Azouz Begag, Farid Boudjellal, Brigitte Smadja, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Mouloud Mammeri as well as “classics” of adult literature whose texts “migrated” to the young adult sector, such as novels by Mouloud Feraoun and Mohammed Dib. Alongside the literature of Maghreb authors, the voices of authors with a “Pied-noir” (people of French and other European ancestry who lived as privileged settlers in French North Africa) [End Page 94] or “Harki” (descendants of Muslim French loyalists and of soldiers fighting in the French army during the Algerian War of Independence) background are also included. Schneider distinguishes four large thematic categories: travel literature, literature on topical themes, the Algerian War of Independence and Emigration/Immigration. Well aware of the fact that there is overlap due to the complex and multifaceted nature of the books, she analyses and compares their themes, discourses, and narrative strategies as well as their ideological, sociological, and historical implications. One of the recurring questions is how these books stage childhood and adulthood with their idiosyncratic twists, turns, and ambivalences. The first and third sections are particularly noteworthy. In the first one, Schneider gives a succinct and highly perceptive overview of literary representations of flight, exile, war, and the loss of a home(land), and—drawing on psychological research on resilience—pays particular attention to the transformations and positive appropriation of these experiences. Regretfully, the predominance of Harki and Pied-noir authors in the chapter on the Algerian War somewhat skews the picture. While it may be important to give voice to marginalized groups, a complex and differentiated approach to this topic, which remains a taboo in France and Algeria to this day, has to include the perspective of Algerian or Maghreb authors on this traumatic event, which continues to cast a large shadow. It is also not clear why Schneider analyses texts for children by former French development workers and soldiers in this section. The third section focuses on educational activities based on texts of “Migrant youth literature” in primary and high schools. It offers concrete, well-structured suggestions for class activities, including lesson plans and model activity sheets. This material is sure to encourage teachers to use these literary texts in class despite curricular or temporal constraints. With her study, Schneider has laid the ground for a critical discussion of the topic “Intercultural literatures of France” and has provided thought-provoking answers to the question of how the political, cultural, and social...

La Soif D’assia Djebar : Pour Un Nouveau Roman Maghrébin

French 20 th century literary modernism, certainly Nouveau Roman, emphasized the death of as a defining trait of novels written from 1948 to 1968. Critics often faulted French New Novelists of period for lacking socio-cultural and political commitment. What is most sure is that French New Novel of 1950s represents a body of literature that founded a new narrative voice which melded subject with its environment as never before. This “fragmented subject” was born from two world wars, atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, genocide of 6 million under Nazis’ regime, and emergence of armed struggles against colonialism. The introspective, descriptive form of narration, found present in works of New Novelists Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor, Claude Ollier, among others, was also influenced by absurdist theatre, prose and French existentialist philosophy of mid-20 th century. The characteristics of new novel are many, yet what stands out most about literary goals of genre is author’s 1) questioning or probing of a troubled identity that is fragmented and “fused” with its environment; 2) a manipulation of narrative time through use of flashbacks, flash forwards, palimpsests; 3) importance of objects over humans and bitterness of Man in capitalist societies where objects have become defining weight on conscious of individual; and 4) questioning of viability of literary word as a means to communicate reality of Man while industrialization is increasingly encroaching on his environment and sense of human being-in-the-world . I argue in this paper that advent of French Nouveau Roman as a radical mode of narrative representation also influenced development of a certain, unique literary “North African modernism” in 1950s. Maghrebi authors, particularly Algerian writing in French in 1950s, such as Mohamed Dib, Kateb Yacine, Mouloud Mammeri, and Assia Djebar present marginalized characters, cast out from their environments, as they also try to navigate in an era that was violently transforming as France’s colonial empire came to an end. I will make case in this paper that Assia Djebar’s first work, La Soif , published in 1957 when she was only 20, is exemplary of themes mentioned above which make up overall 20 th century modernist literary project of 1950s. Often criticized because she did not address raging, anti-colonial struggle taking place in Algeria at time, Djebar’s work should be studied as one that focuses on “tentative processes by which a young woman achieves a sense of self through her relationship with others”. [i] Reflection on Franco-Algerian war of independence is absent from this novel due to literary mode in which Djebar was working and which was characteristic of 1950s. Her modernist novel reflects psychological introspection that characterized most novels of era. The introspection and internal monologues throughout novel provide a means for young, female protagonist to establish her subjectivity in an environment of rapid transformation. Djebar captures essence of an Algerian woman emerging into a new way of being. Her protagonist, Nadia, explores principal, existential Sartrian question asked in novels by writers of French expression writing in 1950s: To what extent can an individual remain disconnected from responsibility of taking action in societies that call on authors to construct social conscious of their era? [i] -Jane Hiddleston. Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria . (Liverpool: Liverpool Press, 2006), 23.

Between Algeria and France: The origins of the Berber movement

The Berber uprisings of April 1980 in Algeria constitute the culmination of two decades of activism and militancy in France and Algeria. The militants’ objective was twofold: first, to raise awareness among Berber people, and second to force the Algerian state to recognise the specificity of Berber culture (and language) and acknowledge it as a component of Algerian identity. This article identifies the different factors in France and Algeria that led to the Berber uprisings and provides an insight into one of the most vibrant and creative, but also repressive, decades in Algerian postcolonial history. The factors I address here are the process of Arabisation; the role of the Berber Academy in Paris along with the influential presence and work of Taos Amrouche and Mouloud Mammeri; the function of the Kabyle radio station Chaîne 2 in Algeria, and the development and impact of the new Kabyle song.

Gariti Mohamed Mouloud Mammeri University Department of English

Gariti Mohamed Mouloud Mammeri University Department of English

Teaching Moral Philosophy Using Novels: Issues and Strategies

Introduction Philosophy instructors have long noted that students often find ethics courses unrelated to their lives--abstract, dry, and dull. I believe that using literature in conjunction with ethical theory is not only an effective way to teach moral philosophy but it also makes ethics classes more interesting and more relevant to students' lives and concerns. The purpose of this article is twofold: to argue in favor of using literature in ethics classes and to show that this is carried out most efficiently by using a couple of novels--preferably two that have different takes on the same issues--rather than short selections as advocated by some authors. To illustrate my case, I will describe an ethics course in which I use Mouloud Mammeri's L'Opium et le baton, (1) Albert Camus' The Plague, and Oliver Johnson's Ethics: Selections from Classical and Contemporary Writers as the primary texts. (2) I. Advantages and Limitations of the Standard Methods of Teaching Ethics College instructors usually adopt either a theoretical or an applied approach to teaching ethics. The former approach takes the form of either a presentation of the philosophies of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill--virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism--followed by the standard objections to them, or the examination of important themes of ethics such as autonomy, rights, justice, etc. In theory classes, real-life problems are sometimes discussed in the light of theories, but lectures and discussions are usually directed towards the evaluation of arguments and the analysis of ethical concepts, principles, and theories. Applied ethics courses, on the other hand, are case-based. Books in applied ethics usually start with a chapter in which normative theories are explained. In the subsequent chapters, the theories are applied to analyze real and hypothetical moral problems in medicine, business, the environment, etc. In these courses, the focus is on application rather than on theories for their own sake. When students are asked to examine cases, they are expected to (1) describe the pertinent facts of the case, (2) clarify the moral problem involved, (3) identify the stakeholders, (4) present alternative solutions, (5) articulate and critically evaluate reasons for each one of them, and (6) recommend the solution in favor of which one has the strongest arguments. Each approach to teaching ethics outlined above obviously has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of the theory approach is the grounding in philosophy, historical depth, and exercise in conceptual analysis and argumentation that result. The case approach to teaching ethics has the advantage of making ethics concrete. It also allows students to imagine tackling moral problems they may encounter in their professional lives and may be useful to teach students how to deal with some relatively noncontroversial and simple issues, such as informed consent and confidentiality. The major disadvantages of the traditional ways of teaching ethics are their abstraction and their oversimplification of the moral life, and this is precisely what makes them dull and uninteresting: students tend to dismiss course material in which the people do not think, feel, and behave the way they expect ordinary people to think, feel, and behave and tend to get more involved in courses in which they do. Indeed, for modern moral theorists, moral values can be compared on a common scale, duty for deontologists and utility for utilitarians. But, as Bernard Williams pointed out, lived morality contains, in addition to duty and utility, all sorts of values that cannot be compared on a common scale: gratitude, friendship, commitments, the sense of personal responsibility, and the aspiration to become a certain kind of person (Williams, 1981, p. 76). In addition, according to deontologists and utilitarians alike, morality is essentially a question of knowledge: Emotions are irrelevant and possibly dangerous; they, therefore, ought to be set aside because they undermine the possibility of shared morality and destroy its rational character. …

Languages learning strategies and the vocabulary size

This Paper focuses on the investigation about Language learning strategies that second year students graduating in English Language, from Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou, declare to use with relation to their vocabulary size. To assess Language learning strategies we have used the model proposed by Oxford (1990) “Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). We have applied also, The University Word Level Test” (UWLT) form B, adapted by Beglar, et al (2000), to measure the vocabulary size by assessing the learners’ basic knowledge of common meaning of words. The vocabulary size results were divided into two groups, higher/ lower. Respectably, the first concept means that the students’ score is higher than the average of the correct definitions given by his colleague students, the second concept means that the students’ score is lower than the average of the correct definitions. The SILL and the UWLT were distributed to forty six (46) second year student from the English department. The study revealed that students used a wider range of direct and indirect learning strategies. However, the meta-cognitive strategies are the most frequently used among others. It was, also, found that the strategies often used by students with higher vocabulary size are different from those used by students with lower vocabulary size. The formers are distinguished by using specific strategies that require more efforts and time and lead to an effective learning, such as using English in different ways, making summaries, guesses. While the latter's are differentiated by making less effort in learning and using surface strategies, as rote memory and gesture strategies, that lead to surface learning.

Crossing Borders: The Limits of Negotiations in Mouloud Mammeri's La Traversée

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 The Berber Spring is not an isolated event: starting in the late 1940s, regionalist identities were understood to be obstacles to national unity, and Algeria's corollary claim to independence; Berber activists were repeatedly excluded from nationalist movements and Kabyle leaders such as Krim Belkacem and Abane Ramdane were assassinated (Silverstein 70). This disavowing of Berber cultural elements by the Algerian nation-state was fundamentally ambivalent as it produced Berber as a subnational category of identity more than it erased. As Paul Silverstein suggested, the Berber cultural movement has decried the myth of a nation united around Arab culture and Islam only to reverse it, implicitly proclaiming Algeria's essential Berber identity (74–5; Gafaïti 37–41). 2 This was not the first time that Mammeri inadvertently found himself the center of attention for promoting Berber cultural elements; less than thirty years previous to the Berber Spring, Mammeri had been condemned for his “regionalist” portrayal of Algeria in La Colline oubliée which prioritized “the small motherland” at the expense of the nation (Lacheraf) to the extent that Mohammed Sahli would rename the novel “The colline of repudiation.” 3 An ahellil is a ceremony which celebrates Berber religious practices. 4 This scene is not merely ironic, however; there is historical truth to it: Silverstein notes that, under the regime of Houari Boumedienne, the Algerian government imported teachers from Egypt to oversee the implementation of Arabization in the educational system (70). 5 Driven away by poverty and cultural alienation from society, Malian Tuaregs predominantly favor their political autonomy. As a result, this people repeatedly rebelled against the Malian government (1962, 1963, 1991). These revolts were violently repressed and led to massive waves of exiles to Libya and Algeria (Bellil 79–98). 6 This solidarity between local Tuaregs and Malian exiles is even more fictional: Algeria never attributed the legal status of “refugees” to Malian Tuaregs. Instead, it assigned to these people the status of “disaster victims,” which does not give them financial support from the Algerian State. This precarious situation increased already palpable social tensions and hierarchies between the different tribes (Bellil 79–98).

Kateb Yacine and the Ruins of the Present

Several years before his death, the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine (19291989) recalled the early phase of his career in Paris, saying that le jour oui il y a eu des embuscades en Algerie, le jour oui il y a eu des morts franqais en Algerie, oui il y a eu le sang, a partir de la le public a commence a s'interesser a l'Algerie. Les 6diteurs ont commence faire automatiquement la chasse aux Algeriens. Dib et moi nous avons et6 publies grace a l'actualite, aux embuscades qu'il y a eu dans France-Soir tous les jours. [the day there were ambushes in Algeria, the day there were French casualties, the day there was blood, then the public began to be interested in Algeria. Editors began to hunt automatically for Algerians. Dib and I were published thanks to current events, the ambushes that were going on every day in the pages of France-Soir.] (Corpet, Dichy and Djaider 60)1 Kateb attributes his entry on the Paris scene, and the arrival of Algerian literature generally, to a violent intervention of history. In his thinking, this constituted a relation of cause and effect between political struggle and literary style, two of his life-long commitments; it also suggests a relationship between history and the means of its expression. Still, the relationship between Kateb's work and the history surrounding it needs clarification. After all, the first significant cluster of Francophone Algerian authors studied in the academy today, called the generation de '52 (or '54, if the speaker wishes to emphasize the start of the war) of Mohamed Dib, Mouloud Mammeri, and Mouloud Feraoun, seems to have emerged with the gradual attainment of literary proficiency in French, concurrent with the coalescence of a sense of potential autonomy and political cohesion, rather than with the suddenness of an ambush. Furthermore, these authors published their first work before the actual outbreak of the hostilities of which Kateb speaks in the interview cited.2 Did the advent of Algerian literature in French, and Kateb's own publication, really depend on editors hunting Algerians, much as the Army was doing? This cause would seem better suited to explain the appearance, from 1954 on, of a variety of temoignages [eyewitness accounts] of the war itself, than to explain the publication of a complex and difficult novel