Intercultural mediation in Algerian FLE (French as a Foreign Language) Textbooks: the case of the fourth-year middle-school textbook

Date de réception : 00/00/0000 Date d'acceptation : 00/00/0000

Abstract

The textbook of French as a foreign language (FLE) is a meeting intersection for the target culture and the learners’ own culture. It is in this sense that it constitutes an essential (inter)cultural mediation in language-culture didactics. As an object of teaching and learning, it is part of the foundational skills (alongside the four traditional skills: written and oral comprehension/expression) to be developed and evaluated in FLE classes. In this regard, the present article examines the prospective linguistic and (inter)cultural mediation tasks present in the fourth-year middle school textbook. To this end, a descriptive and analytical analysis was carried out in order to unravel the nature of the proposed mediation tasks, their evolution throughout the manual, and especially the way in which the mediation competence was didacticized. The analysis revealed a dearth in the number of written mediation tasks and almost non-existent oral mediation tasks. It is thus concluded that the textbook in question remains far from promoting the development of this essential component of (inter)cultural competence.