Département d'Anglais

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    Conrad's mediation in American literature : focus on his dialogic relations with eugene o'neill
    (UNIVERSITYMOULOUDMAMMERI OFTIZI-OUZOU, 2021) Henna, Ibrahim
    This research explores the literary connections between Joseph Conrad and a selection of American authors across three generations, from James Fenimore Cooper up to Eugene O'Neill. The purpose is to shed light in the placement of Conrad in the American literary tradition. To this end, the dialogic or intertextual approach inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva is used but with a significant inflection of the paradigm of dialogism or intertextuality by the new insights provided by the recent theories of gift exchange such as the ones elaborated by Lewis Hyde and Georges Bataille. The research significantly shows that though our modern cultures are overrun by monetary gains, literature remains the domain par excellence wherein the gift community survives the onslaught of the cash nexus and the commodification of human life.
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    On Reconciliation and its representations in select plays by reza wet, girish karnad and griselda gambaro
    (UNIVERSITYMOULOUDMAMMERI OFTIZI-OUZOU, 2022) CHERGUI, Khedidja
    This dissertation entitled, On Reconciliation and its Representations in Select Plays by Reza de Wet, Girish Karnad and Griselda Gambaro explores the representations of reconciliation in modern drama through a reading of select plays by playwrights Reza De Wet, Girish Karnad, and Griselda Gambaro. ‘On Reconciliation and its Representations’ can be broadly conceived as a contribution to literary scholarship on how reconciliation is imagined and represented in literary works notably in societies with a traumatic heritage. Constructing my main argument through thinking of reconciliation as any attempt to subvert hegemonies/hierarchies and imagine alternative realities in works of literature, the study questions the relevance of literary works in disseminating patterns of inclusion, compromise, acceptance of the other, embrace, and/or exclusion. Even though the study adds to previous research on reconciliation, it breaks from earlier approaches to it which fall under the category of a ‘literature on forgiveness’ for the domestic and intimate forms of reconciliation they unveil in works of literature. It argues instead for a kind of reconciliation as a ‘collective experience’ and one which molds itself in social contexts where trauma and violence as instigated by stigmas defined by religion, ethnicity, race, caste, and social class or power are predominant. Framed within a constellative account of critical approaches to text in context, and through viewing literature as a locus of imagining different realities and a space to deconstruct ‘imagined communities’, I investigate reconciliation and its representations by analyzing six plays which are written at the backdrop of violent and traumatic social realities namely Reza De Wet’s African Gothic and Good Heavens, Girish Karnad’sTaléDanda, and Bali: the Sacrifice, and Griselda Gambaro’s Del sol naciente and La malasangre. Religious and inter-caste violence in India, the apartheid trauma and the difficulty of transition into a democratic multicultural society in South Africa, the aftermath of a decade long dictatorial whirlpool in Argentina, and the repression or marginalization ushering from it are the kinds of traumatic experiences and social distortions the playwrights studied in this research are responding to. I argue that in each of these plays, there is an imagining of a different reality, a dismantling of hierarchies and hegemonies, a crossing of boundaries between different ‘others’ (social, racial, religious, and caste), empowerment of margins, and a ‘settlement of accounts’ between victim and perpetrator. After the introduction which situates the research within a growing tradition of interest in reconciliation and literary representation, chapter one entitled On Reconciliation Between Context and Literary Representation sets the research argument in negotiation with a number of critical insights to text in context, and to the role of literature as a source of empowerment and ‘symbolic resistance’. In each of the chapters which follow, there is a venture into understanding the imaginings or representations of reconciliation through an excavation in history and culture, and through providing an interpretation to the texts in ways that reveal how the three playwrights view literature as an abode to imagine alternative realities/worlds and interrogate culture itself.
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    The Representation of death in selected contemporary american novels by don delillo and philip Roth
    (UNIVERSITYMOULOUDMAMMERI OFTIZI-OUZOU, 2023) Enteghar, Kahina
    This thesis deals with the representation of death in four selected contemporary American novels : White Noise(1986)and ZeroK (2016) by Don DeLillo, and Everyman (2003) and Nemesis (2010) by Philip Roth. Using the existential theories of Martin Heidegger, the psychoanalytical ideas of Sigmund Freud and the literary theory of dialogism by Mikhail Bakhtin, it looked into the cultural and private dynamics which altered the death epistemology in the selected novels.The existential, psychological and spiritual impacts of the dissimilar attitudes toward death range from denial to affirmation of its inevitability without admitting its existential/ ontological merit. Existential inauthenticity, meaninglessness, and loss of dwelling, in addition to psychological introversion and uncanniness, are consequences of the different representations of death. These consequences articulate the postmodern estrangement from the naturalness and necessity of finitude. However, while DeLillo struggles against the postmodem cultural pathology of meaninglessness by advocating reconciliation with the inevitability of death, Roth struggles with the idea of mortality and offers a cynical image of death synonymous with deprivation and humiliation.In addition,the thesis argued that DeLillo and Roth's conceptualisation of death absorbs philosophical, literary, psychoanalytical, religious and historical discourses and dialogises them in formulating a discourse of death which challenges all the claims of authority orcentrality.It showed that a priord iscourse on death is but a point of reference in the formulation of awider postmodern discourse.In contrast to DeLillo's fiction which enters in a dialogue with context and historical events andupdates,Roth's texts interrogate other literary texts in order to investigate contemporary attitudes to death; comparing and contrasting the epoch'simage of death to previous ones, and answering DeLillo's discourse.
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    American Women (re) Writing the Frontier: Domesticity, the Production of Space and Social Relationships in Selected Narratives of the 19th and 20th centuries
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2021) Afettouche, Belaid
    This thesis examines women’s literary representations of the American Frontier in selected fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It studies the issue of the production of space and social relationships which is embedded in their dialogized discourse. Responding to their male counterparts who see the frontier space as the place of the male renewal and the domestication of the woman, many female authors such as Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Mary Austin, Willa Cather, and Laura Ingalls Wilder appropriated the frontier space to discuss gender-related issues such as social roles, the private and the public spaces. Borrowing the concept of representational space from Henry Lefebvre, it argues that these women writers resort to that grand narrative of American identity and Manifest Destiny in order to show their resistance and participate in the debate on the place of women in the American society. To show their discord with the dominant frontier ideology which represents the woman as silent, dainty, and submissive, they promote a contrasting image, that of a courageous independent woman who enjoys the outdoor space. To reach its aim and investigate the ways in which these American female writers produced space and social relationships, revised the male frontier narrative and challenged the status quo which constricted women’s mobility, the present research adopts a conjunction of perspectives, borrows from spatial, dialogic and feminist theories. The way these U.S. women authors produced space and social relationships is studied in the light of Henry Lefebvre’s spatial theory developed in his book The Production of Space (1991). In this book, Lefebvre explains that it is through movement that the spatial ideologies are produced and transformed. The dialogized discourse of the women writers under study is examined through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism explained in his books The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (1981) and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1984). As far as their feminist stance is concerned, the latter is treated in the light of the feminist assumptions of Victoria Walker explained in her article “Feminist Criticism, Anglo-American” (1993).
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    An Investigation in Teaching Strategies : a Process- Genre Model to Promote Students ' Writing skills : Case of third year EFL students at the university of Bejaia
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2022) Imerzoukene, Sonia
    Writing, as both a means and a skill, helps students face education and future professional life challenges. Hence, mastering writing is crucial; despite the fact most of EFL students encounter difficulties to achieve such objective. The present research investigates a process-genre model as an alternative to remedy to such intricacies and promote students' writing skill. The sample of the study includes 34 third year students of english at the university of Bejaia. The model is inspired from badger and White's (2000) process-genre approach. The model is based on the principles of the product, process and genre approches to teaching writing.The researcher introduced four modes of writing texts (sxpository, narrative, descriptive and argumentative), accomplished in 180 minutes each.The model proposed is based on seven steps : preparation; modelling; planning; collaborative writing; independent writing; Revision and Assessment. The study relies on student's essays evaluated on the basis of an essay assessment rubric (Read Write Think).The latter encompasses the main elements of writing investigated in this study ( Focus and Details; Organization; Voice; Word Choice; and sentence structure, Grammar, Machanics and Spelling).The results revealed the effectiveness of the process- genre model as students developped in a significant way writing skills.The improvement is significant in all the elements includes in the investigation. The results also show that the student-participants still face challenges in the last element ( Sentence Structure, Grammar, Mechanics and Spelling) as they highlight a slight improvement in the students' essays.The research work lists a set of recommendations for teaching writing in general and adopting the process-genre model in particular with reference to its main constituents.
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    Of Cultural Literacy in First- and Second-Generation Algerian Middle School Textbooks
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2022) Morsli, Lynda
    This thesis probes into a comparative study of the cultural literacies in the First and Second-generation Algerian EFL textbooks for middle schools. The First-generation textbooks consist of a series of four books entitled Spotlight on English 1 (2003), Spotlight on English 2 (2004), Spotlight on English 3 (2005) and On the Move (2006). The Second-generation textbook series consists of four textbooks entitled My Book of English (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). Inspired by culture and post-colonial theories, we undertake a macro and micro-levels textbook evaluation of the two textbook series focusing on issues related to cultural literacy, national ideologies and identity. We are particularly interested in knowing the extent to which the textbooks conform to new theoretical findings in teaching that “silent” language called culture. A substantial cultural literacy is crucial as it fosters both national identity, understanding of the other and international citizenship. The textbook evaluation draws on the Social Semiotic Multimodal approach, analyzing both texts and images within the teaching materials. The findings reveal that the two textbook series have different views and choices of culture, and proceed from quite different ideological standpoints. Purposes of teaching culture vary within the textbooks reflecting different cultural literacies associated with different attitudes towards nationalism, culture “imperialism” and national identity. The cultural literacy provided in the first-generation textbooks targets the British and American societies representing the target culture. The Second-generation, on the other hand, favors national culture and strives to promote national pride in the Algerian and Muslim heritage. The findings reveal that both textbook series adopt a national approach to culture that is characterized by native-speakerism and banal nationalism for the First-generation textbook series, while the second-generation carries elements of banal nationalism and reflects what Hallidays calls “exotica of difference”. Besides, the complex nature of culture is totally overlooked, as both Algerian and British/American societies are depicted as homogeneous societies with a predominantly middle-class student population.
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    Language learning strategies in the Algerian middle school : case of fourth year puplis
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2022) Benkheddoudja, Abdelaziz
    The present study investigated the impact of Explicit Strategy Training on the achievement, strategy use, learning awareness and autonomyof the Algerian fourth Year Middle School pupils as well as on the professional growth and development of the Algerian Middle School Teachers of English. The researcher adopted an experimental designthat provided (06) six months’ strategy training for one hundred (100) pupils and (02) two months training in strategy instruction for teachers. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods in which two questionnaires were designed for teachers in addition to a questionnaire (The SILL), two exams and an interview for pupils. The Middle School pedagogical documents mainly the curriculum, the textbooks, and the teacher’s guides were also used as instruments for data collection.The study findings revealed that there is a statistically significant, and strong positive relationship between strategy training and pupils’ academic improvement, strategy awareness raising and strategy use; additionally, the results demonstrated that due to strategy training the teachers developed a range of teaching strategies, skills, expertise, and more self-confidence in how to deliver appropriate strategy training to their pupils.
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    Imperial Nationalist Gospels in the Oeuvre of the Algerianist Louis Bertrand and the Anglo-Indian Rudyard Kipling
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2022-03-17) Djadi, Sara
    The present thesis reconsidered the ideology of imperialism as espoused by the Algerianist Louis Bertrand and the Anglo-Indian Rudyard Kipling putting it in a new frame. It sought to highlight the nationalist and defensive tenets overlooked in the writers’ texts arguing that in their case imperialism is an extreme form of nationalism. Therefore, the study explored the underpinnings of “Imperial Nationalism” in the authors’ writings to show that the latter were deeply influenced by the French and the British national and international anxieties which aroused their nationalist sentiments and gave shape to their imperial literary creation used to enhance their nations’ imperial agendas.The analysis was performed on two main axes. First, it examined the implied fears and the anxieties the authors had about their imperial and national integrity.Then, it tried to demonstrate the solutions they proffered to cope with the uncertainty of their empires.Second, it displayed their views about the consolidation of the imperial nationalist situation through the use literature as a mythmaking and myth-disseminating device. To do so, the analysis drew on the premises of the New historicist and Postcolonial Literary theories believing that the works of the twowriters could not be read away from their contexts. A comprehensive view of their ideologies required the examination of the writings of each of them as interrelated and complementary circles in a long chain and as the culmination of various socio-political conditions and imperial situation.
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    The Dialectics of Politics and Aesthetics in Twentieth Century Literature: Commitment and Organicity in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Yasmina Khadra's L'écrivain
    (Adresse Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2021) Boutirna, Dounia
    This thesis discusses commitment in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Yasmina Khadra’s L’écrivain. It demonstrates commitment from the position of organicity vis-à-vis aesthetics and politics, and reveals that Joyce’s organic aesthetics and Khadra’s insidedness are forms of engagement, which allow them to “speak truth to power”. This thesis hypothesizes that organic aesthetics creates a kind of a “sundial of history”, making A Portrait aesthetic in form and political in content. It also suggests that Khadra’s insidedness towards the ruling elite leads him to discuss, in L’écrivain, the mechanisms of power and to resist its absorption into the Algerian regime’s propagandist campaign. The work is divided into three chapters. The first chapter deals with affinities in texts and contexts. It analyzes the themes of fatherhood and motherhood and illustrates the relationship of the protagonists with the different social, religious and political forces. I rely on Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of the archetype to analyze the procedure that Stephen and Mohammed follow to construct their personalities and to show how their inner selves react to religious, cultural and social constraints, which prevented their intellectual freedom. The distinct processes of the protagonists, and by extension, the writers towards maturity reveal their positions towards politics and aesthetics. On the one hand, Joyce’s rebellious attitude led him to adopt an organic aesthetics in order to explore the language and free his fiction from the literary conformity of the “cultural industry”. On the other hand, Khadra’s inability to resist the authority of his father, who urged him to join the military institution, led him to adopt a position of organicity vis-à-vis politics. Though different, both writers are similar in that they invested their organicity, each at a different level, to express commitment. The second chapter demonstrates how Joyce’s organic aesthetics in A Portrait discusses socio-political issues. Barthes’ anti-communicational approach reveals that “writing” is the locus of commitment, repositioning it at the level of the signifier instead of the signified as claimed by the Marxists. Indeed, Adorno’s conception of the “monad” explains that the novel’s aestheticism is not apoliticism, rather it gives a socio-political dimension to the text by virtue of the “double character” of aesthetic devices as ornamental and instrumental. This chapter discusses commitment in politicized aesthetics and reveals that aesthetics has its own politics or meta-politics. The third chapter deals with Khadra’s L’écrivain and demonstrates how the writer “speaks truth to power” from an organic positionality vis-à-vis political power. It analyzes the conceptions of the Algerian state in terms of conflict and construction in order to explain the socio-political context wherein the writer operates. It illustrates the writer’s shift from the tendency of “aestheticizing politics” and violence, making propaganda for the regime to the tendency of “politicizing aesthetics” and expressing commitment from a state of insidedness. The thesis examines commitment at distinct levels and reveals that it is possible in a state of aesthetic and political organicity
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    The Anglicization of Algerian netizens : a multimodal social semiotic study
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2021-05-17) Hocine, Karima
    The present study is concerned with the analysis of the Anglicization of Algerian netizens through Facebook groups and pages designed in English. It is intended to determine the assumptions behind the use of English by Algerian Facebookers, who live in an environment which seldom allows them direct access to real spoken or written English except through the web. The study is based on Mixed Methods Research. It combines quantitative and qualitative methods. It uses a descriptive statistical method to elicit statistical data, then, adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis for the interpretation and explanation of the results. It also applies Kress’ and Theo Van Leeuwen’s Social Semiotic Multimodal Approach to account for the whole visual design and layout of Algerian Facebook groups and pages designed in English at both the linguistic and visual levels. In order to gather the data, two questionnaires are used. The first questionnaire is addressed to Algerian netizens using English through Facebook groups and pages. The second questionnaire is addressed to Algerian designers of Facebook groups and pages using English. Visuals extracted from the same groups and pages are randomly selected.The findings show that the use of English in Algeria is remarkably increasing, especially in cyberspace as Facebook groups and pages designed in English are emerging steadily, and if things continue evolving this way, English may, in the long run, and most probably in the digital context, threaten the status of French in Algeria. Yet, its level and degree of usage remains confined to the young literate elite, which includes mainly teachers of English, university lecturers, students and doctors. In fact, Algerian netizens, especially the young generation, are aware of the importance of English as an international language of business, diplomacy, science and technology, and therefore, they do not only use it for learning the language itself but also for other purposes, including fun, entertainment, meeting new people, striving to be up to date and expressing themselves. Interestingly, this online use of English is not completely a matter of being part of the globalized world, because even if the Algerian youth are fond of using English in Facebook groups and pages, it does not mean that they forget their culture. Rather, it is quite the opposite, as they use English to make their culture known overseas. This is particularly obvious in their use of visuals. More than that, it can be assumed that such use of English is also a call for change in the Algerian linguistic policy because the Algerian netizens surveyed want English to be the first foreign language in Algeria in the future. Indeed, this study has proven that a change in the Algerian educational policy towards English appears salutary to cope with the increasing demand of English use
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    William shakespeare's representation of empire : revision of some classic postcolonial theories
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2020) HALIL, Houria
    This research seeks to explore William Shakespeare’s representation of the so-called British Empire and its relations with the other European powers and the World of Islam, with a special emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Morocco.Five of Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays are used for illustration, most notably The Merchant of Venice (1596), Othello (1603),Antony and Cleopatra(1607), Cymbeline (1609-10)and The Tempest (1611). Taking its theoretical bearings from the new historicist and postcolonial approaches developed by literary scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt and Edward Said, the research argued that the issues of imperial relationships in Shakespeare are not solely centred on the transatlantic colony of Virginia, but also extended to the Mediterranean basin wherein Britain had much more trade and diplomatic activity, during Shakespeare’s time. This activity also created a cosmopolitan zone of contact, wherein peple of the orient elbowed people from the West, which inevitably gave rise to a pre-modern form of orientalism reflected in Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays. Postcolonial reactions and responses to the colonial advocates promoted the idea of dominance and subordination of the post-colonial world and put the latter at the mercy of the colonial power. Hence, Orientalist or Postcolonial theories are discarded rather than appealed to in this study. The reason is that my research reversed these traditional beliefs as well as the roles of both the West and the East by questioning the Western supremacy mainly the English by focusing on the fact that it was the East, not the West, that had the power in both the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries when it comes to the political and military matters. Here, I am fully aware that the main players on the political and military scene at that time were the Ottomans, the French, the Portuguese and the Spaniards. I am also conscious about how the West used to think, and still does, of the Orient as the inferior “Other”. In this research, I have argued that at a time when the English were not well known enough to the Turks and the Arabs, the former had to identify themselves as French instead. According to some historical records, I can say that it is less logical to speak of the English as a colonizing imperial as the other Western European powers like the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the French who dominated trans-Atlantic trade and the New World riches as the Bard of Avon implied it in his plays. Therefore, I can confirm that in my research, I tried to give evidence that Shakespeare is no longer an advertiser of the colonial enterprise (spirit of the empire) but he is one of its victims.
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    he Representations of Algerian Women in Mid-Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Travel Books By British and American Male and Female Authors
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2019) Seddiki, Sadia
    This thesis critiques the images of Algerian women in a number of Western travel writings published between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. It argues that these writings are characterized by a discourse that circulated an image of the Algerian woman which varies between the portrayal of the Moorish woman as a downtrodden victim who was imprisoned, secluded, shrouded, and treated as a beast of burden and the wanton Ouled Naïl woman. The Kabyle woman was an interesting case for the travellers because she, at least on the surface, did not fit any of the readymade moulds crafted by Orientalists for Muslim women whose depiction in the nineteenth century took two forms which oscillated between a voiceless victim and an Odalisque. Through an in-depth critical analysis of these writings and taking my theoretical bearings from postcolonial theories, critical theories and feminist literary criticism, I have reached a number of findings. This work illustrates how these travellers’ narratives invest in the tropes of colonial discourse often deployed to describe the “Other”, and how their inception and reception was conditioned by the imperial ideologies of the nineteenth-century which directed and limited these travellers’ observations in relation to the Orient. The research delineates how Barbara Bodichon’s heroification of Madame Luce of Algiers was her way of inscribing European women in imperial history and that this discursive intervention ignores the indigenous women (and their nation) and relegates them to the margins of her narrative and history. The work further describes how the colony and its women function as a stage for the travellers and their self-representation. Moorish and Kabyle women represent a space allowing these travellers construct, perform and project a capable and knowledgeable traveller identity while endeavouring to adhere to Victorian gender expectations. Despite being an object of Western fascination with the Ouled Naïl dancer these narratives agree that she was outside the European definition of an honest woman and was at the receiving end of an intrusive and often uninvited colonial gaze that objectified and eroticized her. Deconstructing the Western travellers’ gaze and demonstrating how it functions in the context of the lives of the Ouled Naïl dancers, this thesis reveals how this gaze is implicated in the continued oppression of these women.
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    Algerian EFL Students reading practices in the digital era: A sociocultural approach
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2020-03-07) Ammour, Kamila
    The purpose of this thesis is to explore and compare the Algerian EFL students’ reading practices in digital and print-based environments in terms of gender differences, geographical location, and mother tongue. Accordingly, the leading approach to the raised issues is sociocultural wherein reading is perceived as a social practice. To accomplish the aim, qualitative and quantitative data collection and data analysis procedures were combined to yield the validity and the reliability of the results. The study took place at two Algerian universities notably, MouloudMammeri University of Tizi-ouzou and Ali Lounici University of Blida. Four research tools were used to collect data: a questionnaire, two reading comprehension tests, reading survey (SODPRS), and an interview. The collected data were analysed by means of qualitative content analysis, critical discourse analysis, and statistical analysis that combines descriptive statistics (cross tabulation, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistic procedures (chi-square test, correlation, independent samples t-test, paired samples t-test, and ANOVA).Findings indicate that a significant discrepancy is noticed among Algerian EFL students in terms of their cognitive focus and critical comprehension in print-based and digital environments. In addition, they show teleological perceptions and ambivalent attitudes towards reading. As regards gender differences, unexpectedly, while female students outperform their male counterparts in digital reading, male students score higher in print-based reading. In addition, girls are depicted as holistic readers, while boys hold an atomistic approach to reading.Apart from slight differences in terms of pre-reading strategy-use, the urban-rural divide is shallow in the Algerian context. Last but not least, divergent reading practices are observed among Arabic and Berber speakers in terms of perception, and preferences for specific genres in print or digital environments.To put it in a nutshell, the sociocultural peculiarities of the Algerian society make of the Algerian EFL students distinct learners who show particular reading attitudes, strategy-use, and types of texts they tend to read. The findings hold several implications for EFL reading instruction in the Algerian context. Possible directions for future research are suggested.
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    he American dream in selected American fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries : meanings, revision and displacement
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2020) AZIZ, Rabéa
    The present research studies the revisionary aspect of the American Dream in selected fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It shows how the concept takes on a revisionary dimension in American fiction, either at national or international levels, by negotiating a previous literature. The process of revision, at its heart, carries within it the displacement of the concept, either in history or in geography. In the nineteenth century, the American Dream was given a nationwide vision in the fiction of the antebellum writers, who dreamed of unifying the American culture, economy and government to form one single nation distinct from Europe. In the postbellum period, regional writers revise the antebellum literature, claiming the specificity of their regions and the impossibility of unifying culture, economy and government, because of the diversity of ethnicity and geography in the American vast land. The American Dream is, thus, given a regional vision in their fiction. In the turn of the twentieth century, American literature revises the English thought in relation to some issues that characterized the era, such as urbanization, education, woman and marriage. The American Dream in this period takes on an international dimension by misreading universal issues and giving them an American understanding. During the inter-war period, the American Dream is negotiated between urban and rural visions in the literature of the 1920s and the 1930s. This is apparent in the fiction of the 1930s, which gives the concept a rural vision, revising the literature of the 1920s, which gives it an urban vision. The revisionary meanings of the American Dream are the result of its mythical, psychological, historical and geographical aspects, which make it subject to change at each time the conditions of life change. The psychological aspect of the American Dream is treated in the light of Harold Bloom’s theory of Revision explained in his books The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and The Map of Misreading (1975). In these two books, Bloom draws a relationship between writers and their precursors, and explains the process of influence and revision in Freudian psychological terms of son/father relationship. Revision is associated in this thesis with T.S. Eliot’s “sense of tradition” developed in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919). The geographical and historical aspects of the American Dream are studied in relation to the process of Displacement, as explained in Northrop Frye’s book Anatomy of Criticism (1957), and consolidated by what Edward Said would call in his Orientalism (1978) the author’s “Strategic Location”. The reason is that the revisionary aspect of the American Dream carries within it geographical and historical displacements, due to the author’s geographical and historical locations and his relation with his literary tradition.
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    Male, female or bothÀ: Androgyny in thomas hardy's fiction
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2019-11) Hatem, Youcef
    This thesis is no more than a tiny drop in the ocean of Hardyan studies dealing with gender. Leaving the beaten path of studies devoted to the traditional binary opposition male female, this research explores a third, intermediate, and medial gender otherwise known as androgyny. It examines the presence/ absence of androgyny in the Hardyan protagonists of selected novels, namely the major novels Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Jude the Obscure (1895), The Return of the Native (1878) and the minor ones The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) and A Laodicean(1881), and exposes the outcomes of the presence/absence of androgyny to highlight the Hardyan sexual politics which consists in delineating characters who are neither male nor female, but both so the argument and hypothesis of this research goes. For the theoretical framework, the research draws on a variety of theories subsumed under the major bearings which is Queer Theory in its Butlerian orientation, i.e., performance theory. The other theories which have proved to be equally relevant are the theory of androgyny as put forward by Virginia Woolf, and Sandra Bem plus the theory of tragedy. The research reveals that some of the Hardyan protagonists, namely Gabriel Oak, EthelbertaPetherwin and Paula Power who are androgynous cope well with the different situations they face and get along the gender trouble some of them endure. Some others such as EustaciaVye, Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead become tragic characters because of their androgyneity while Michael Henchard ends tragically because of lack of androgyny. This research aims to provide evidence as to Hardy’s recourse to androgyny to get around the ruthless Victorian sexual politics that had room for two categories of gender. It also targets to highlight the cruciality of androgyny in the psychological well-being of the characters under discussion. This research thus seeks to reestablish Thomas Hardy as a writer who is ahead of his time in terms of conception of issues such as gender.
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    Implementing student self-assessment to promote self-regulated learning in academic writing within the LMD : Case study: third year LMD students at the Department of English at the University of Bejaia
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2019-10) Kadri, Nawal
    The present research examines the effect self-assessment has on EFL students’ self-regulatory practices and performance in academic writing. Previous research has shown that the ability to review and reflect on one’s own writing can enhance both self-regulation skills and achievement. However, little has been done exploring this relationship on Algerian learners. To investigate this effect in the Algerian higher education, fourty-nine EFL third year students from the department of English at the University of Bejaia participated in the study. Specifically, the study entailed a pre-post experiment with an experimental group (n=24) and a control one (n=25). Participants from the experimental group were actively involved in a 5-months classroom intervention in which they used different self-assessment techniques (checklists, rubrics, scripts and conferences) to review and reflect on their writing. To collect data, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Self-regulation was measured before and after the self-assessment intervention using a self-regulation scale and portfolio analysis was carried out to assess the students’ written productions. Besides, we used writing logs as a research tool to get insight into the students’ attitude, needs and expectations. Findings were supplemented by data gathered from the classroom observation. Significant effects of self-assessment were found for the self-reported self-regulation and writing performance of the participants involved in the self-assessment treatment. Basically, increased metacognitive awareness, enhanced self-efficacy and positive attitudes were the major influences of self-assessment on the participants. Nevertheless, the results also voiced some concerns regarding the implementation of the process in EFL writing instruction, notably the students’ inexperience with self-assessment, time constraints, the students’ low language proficiency, procrastination and absenteeism. The study underlines the need for teachers to engage students in constant self-assessment of their learning and to address self-regulation skills in EFL classrooms. The thesis has implications for both classroom practice and decision making.
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    The impact of strategy -Based instruction on EFL University student speaking proficiecy, strategy Use, Self-Confidence and motivation tospeak English: The Case of Mouloud Mamerri and M'hamed Bougara Universities , Algeria
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI, 2019-07) Benaissa, Amel
    Speaking is one of the four macro skills to be developed for successful communication. In foreign language contexts, both environmental and cognitive factors make it challenging for students of English as a foreign language (EFL) to develop this skill (De Bot, 1992; Kouraogo, 1993), which makes teachers’ design of an effective instructional program a crucial task. Accordingly, learner strategies deserve more attention in such settings where speaking development fostered by natural exposure to different communicative events remains very limited. The present study was carried out to examine the impact that a learner strategy instructional program and its corresponding strategy website can have on Algerian EFL students’ speaking proficiency. It also aimed at finding out whether such training could influence positively their actual use of the strategies and increase their self-confidence and motivation to speak English as a foreign language. To these ends, a quasi experimental research was conducted with 120 freshman students both at Mouloud Mammeri and M’hamed Bougara universities in Algeria. Four intact groups of students were divided into a control (n=60) and an experimental (n=60) group. This longitudinal study was carried out in three stages: The first phase of the research was the pre-training one. It aimed at assessing students’ speaking performance, their current patterns of strategy use when performing the speaking tasks as well as their perceived self-confidence and motivation to speak English. The second phase of the research was the training itself. Both groups (experimental and control) enrolled on a sixteen-session speaking course over a period of sixteen weeks. However, unlike the control group, the experimental group followed a classroom-based program that included strategies for using and learning English as a foreign language. The students were also introduced to a speaking strategy website designed by the researcher. The effects of the training were assessed in the third phase of the experimentation by means of four quantitative data collection tools and one qualitative research instrument. These include the participants’ post course speaking tests scores, their corresponding strategies checklists, and a self-confidence and motivation questionnaire. The post-training phase also comprised a website strategy tracking form and a retrospective interview for the experimental group students. To analyze the data, a two-level analysis, which consists of a between-groups comparison (control and experimental groups) and a within-group comparison (pre and post-test results), was conducted. The research findings partly confirm the facilitative role of the strategy training program on students’ speaking proficiency. First, it was found that the experimental group students significantly outperformed the control group counterparts in the description task but not in the conversation task. However, when looking at the within-groups comparison results, the experimental group students’ improvement was slightly higher than the control group one. Adding to that, there were considerable differences in the use of different strategies in favor of the treatment group. As regards the impact of the strategy instruction on the students’ perceived self-confidence and motivation to speak English, the program was only a lukewarm success and much work remains to be done to find ways of enhancing learners’ self-confidence to speak English.
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    Myth and ritual in tennessee Williams' plays
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI, 2019) Larabi, Sabéha
    Cette thèse de doctorat intitulée 'Mythes et rites dans l'œuvre de Tennessee Williams' étudie la récurrence du mythe de la naissance et de la résurrection connue sous le nom du mythe de Dionysos dans la mythologie grecque dans le théâtre du dramaturge Américain Tennessee Williams de l'après deuxième guerre mondiale, notamment des années quarante, cinquante et soixante. L'approche mythocritique de l'œuvre de Williams met en évidence un grand mythe de référence, dans lequelberce l'imaginaire Williamsien, dans un agencement qui reflète l'histoire de la psyché occidentale et la stratification de l'inconscient collectif dont il estissus. Le mythe de Dionysos, immortalisé par Les Bacchantes, est le substrat du corpus williamsien, la tragédie d'Euripide apparaissant comme le paradigme dramatique de plusieurs pièces majeures. Les comédies de Williams révèlent également une homologie avec l'autre versant du mythe, celui du dieu phallique et de l’homosexualité. Le déclin du mythe de Dionysos est lié à l'émergence rivale du mythe d'Orphée, qui hanta toute sa vie le poète dramaturge à l'inspiration élégiaque. La résurgence des mythèmes de la descente aux enfers, du regard en arrière et du sparagmos final témoignent d'une identification profonde au mythe grec, dont le sacrifice est assimilé à l'oblation du Christ, par un rapprochement sacrilège caractéristique du gnosticisme Williamsien. L'archétype Dionysien apparaît finalement, à la lumière de la psychologie Jungienne, comme la représentation incomplète de la totalité psychique symbolisée l'androgyne, dont la nostalgie sous-tend toute l'œuvre williamsien. Le mythe grec constitue un outil pratique de représentation des diversesfacettes de la vie humaine grâce à sa plasticité et à sa polysémie. Ces derniers éléments, ainsi que son caractère archétypal ont permis la création d’un grand nombre de récits, quiont inspiré la création de plusieurs thèmes littéraires et de motifs iconographiques. Leursurvivance même après la fin de l’Antiquité, au cours du Moyen Age, de la Renaissance,et jusqu’à l’époque actuelle, prouve l’adaptabilité de ces traditions mythiques aux besoinsde sociétés et d’époques variées.
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    Cooperative learning and classroom anxiety: Acomprative study between the departement of english in Boumerdes and that in Tizi ouzou
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI, 2019-09-19) Berbar, Katia
    Anxiety is considered a negative factor that prevents students from communicating their ideas and developing their language proficiency. Reducing students’ apprehension in the classroom can enhance their language learning experience and improve their communicative competence. In recent decades, cooperative learning has attracted the attention of researchers and educators due to its positive outcomes on students’ performance. Thereby, this thesis aims to measure the levels of anxiety in oral classes and compare the effects of cooperative learning with the traditional instructional method on anxiety. Besides, the study attempts to determine the factorsthat may hamper the implementation of cooperative learning, and examine students’ cooperative behaviors and their perceptions of cooperative work. To this end, four classes of second-year students of English enrolled at the Universities of Boumerdes and Tizi Ouzou during the academic year 2015-2016 participated in the study. This fifteen-week quasi-experimental research involvedtwo experimental classes introduced to cooperative learning and two control groups taught with the conventional lecture method.Three instruments were used to collect data: a modified version of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope’s (1986) anxiety questionnaire, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methodology was used to analyze the findings. The questionnaire was used as a pre-test and a post-test to ascertain the participants’ level of anxiety. The pre-intervention findings indicated that the participants had a moderate level of anxiety. No statistically significant differencewas found between the anxiety scores of the study groups. The post-intervention data showed significant reductions in the participants’ levels of anxiety. However, no statistically significant differenceappeared between the anxiety scores of the students who studied cooperatively and those who worked individually. Classroom observation and the interviews with fourteen students revealed the problems obstructing the integration of cooperative learning in oral classes such as students’ resistance, classroom situation, and domineering group members. Despite their hostile reaction, the participants progressively displayed cooperative behaviors. Most of the interviewed students had favorable perceptions of cooperative learning and expressed their desire to work in cooperation more often. Therefore, instructors should be encouraged to use cooperative learning as part of their teaching. Keywords: language anxiety, cooperative learning, traditional lecture method, comparative study, quasi-experimental design.
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    Reading James Joyce through the eyes of Algerian francophone writers
    (Universite Mouloud MAMMERI Tizi-Ouzou, 2018-11) Ferhi, Samir
    The present research work is meant to make a comparative study between James Joyce's Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922), and the Algerian literary works written in French, namely Mohammed Dib's Trilogy Algeria , Yacine Kateb's Nedjma (1958) and Rachid Boudjedra's La Repudiation (1969). Using and reading the selected literary works by James Joyce through Algerian eyes, this comparative study reveals that despite the differences of culture, beliefs and languages separating Joyce from his Algerian counterparts, their works are quite similar. To reach the objectives of the study, we have borrowed some analytical and literary concepts from postcolonial theories and critical studies such as those put forward by Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, T. S, Eliot, Robert Young and Mikhail Bakhtin. The main focus of the research is on the authors' similar viewpoints on issues related to the pathology of paralysis, colonialism, cosmopolitanism, hybridity, fanatic religion and the carnivalesque. Accordingly, the research is divided into six chapters. The first chapter provides us with the life and times of the selected authors with a historical and literary background of both colonial Ireland and colonial Algeria, by focusing on the most important events which deeply marked the history of both countries. The second chapter is devoted to a comparison between Joyce's collection of short stories in Dubliners and Dib's trilogy Algeria with a particular emphasis on the pathology of paralysis, while the third chapter provides a study of the critical cultural resistance which followed as a means of countering it. The fourth chapter concerns a comparative reading of Kateb's Nedjma and Joyce's Ulysses in an attempt to shed light on the themes of nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. The fifth chapter deals with the cultural and linguistic hybridity in Joyce's and Kateb's novels. Chapter six focuses on the study of family romance in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Boudjedra's La Répudiation. The theme of family romance is looked at from a Freudian psychoanalysis and a Bakhtinian carnivalesque.