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Developing an Intercultural Awareness in an ESP Context:

A challenge for the Novice ESP Practitioners

Biodata

Nawal MEBITIL is Assistant Professor at MASCARA University. She Holds a Magister in ESP from TLEMCEN University and she is currently a doctorate student. Her research interests include language-learning motivation, teachers’ development, teaching strategies, needs analysis, and factors that affect ESP teaching/ learning process.

§  E-mail: mebitilnawal@hotmail.fr

§  Phone number: 00 213 772 288 425

Abstract:

The adoption of the LMD system within an Algerian context, fundamentally, at all universities, across different departments including mostly all specialities, aspired to achieve, more or less, better changes in the Algerian system of higher education and go, even, beyond to produce, hopefully, prospective Algerian scientists, researchers, teachers and workers who are supposed to be well prepared for the trend they are expected to take part in to meet both the needs and the requirements of the working life and the different markets. To manage this end, ESP courses are provided nationwide. The main purpose of the current paper is, therefore, to expand the actual scope of developing an intercultural awareness among learners who are already engaged in ESP context by developing what is theoretically known as “intercultural competence” as a key to better grasp the learners’ actual needs and wants, besides, their future expectations.

In this respect, one should think of how to bridge the existing gap between ESP learners’ own culture and the others’ culture (i.e., target one). And how would it be possible to develop their intercultural awareness taking into account that the ESP practitioners are still novice teachers?

Key-words: ESP, ESP context, practitioner, learners, intercultural competence, intercultural awareness,   teaching/learning process.

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