Browsing by Author "Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)"

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A Discourse-Semiotic Analysis of Socio-Cultural Aspects of Television Advertising
(University of Algiers II. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2010) Azzouni, Mouloud; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
Nowadays, as a direct consequence of revolutionary advances in technology, TV advertisements (ads) have become omnipresent in our lives. However, they are rarely studied in the context of Algerian academia despite their importance. Being complex ‘coded’ discourses, TV ads need to be ‘decoded’ in order to get their meanings. In an attempt to shed light on the meaning of TV ads, this dissertation proposes an interdisciplinary approach that aims to analyze TV ads by borrowing analytical tools from the fields of semiotics and discourse analysis. The dissertation is a qualitative comparative one, using a discursive-semiotic approach to explore the socio-cultural elements in two TV ads, one in English and the second in Arabic. It is divided into two main parts : a theoretical part and an analytical part. The analysis of the two TV ads (one for the luxury watches Rolex, the other for a mobile telephone company, Nedjma) reveals the efficient use of a considerable amount of socio-cultural signs in the structure of both ads. But what is interesting is that each TV ad adapts those socio-cultural signs and symbols to the nature of the product/service being advertised, and to the environment or context in which it is going to be used. The result is a highly persuasive discourse, characterized by its multimodality. The TV ads benefit at full stretch by the potential for meaning-making, offered by the possibility of combination between different modes of representation (language, image and sound, for instance). The socio-cultural signs and symbols used in the discursive construction of the TV ads are themselves polyvocal. So, when used in combination they offer a wealth of possible meanings; and they create room for connotations. In fact, the analysis shows that it is connotation which takes primacy over denotation in both TV ads. The contribution of this dissertation is that it compares the important socio-cultural elements in the building the discourse of two TV ads and points to areas of similarities and differences.
A Study of the effect of the discourse-based appraoch to teaching grammar on learners' understanding and use of the past perfect
(2012) Khadroun, Salem; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
For more than a decade now, first year students at the Université de Formation Continue (UFC) of Djelfa have been taught grammar at the sentence level with much focus on grammar rules which they have to internalize so that they can use and write grammatically correct sentences. However, day-to-day observation of these students show that they do have an acceptable mastery of grammatical structures but are unable to communicate meaningfully and appropriately. In other words, these learners have sufficient grasp of the rules of grammar but use grammatical features in non-native-like ways that cannot be simply categorized as grammatical errors or inappropriate English at the level of the sentence. In the case of tenses, for example, when learners write a piece of discourse of their own , they are unable to control the use of tenses in a sequence of related sentences: they use tenses arbitrarily, overextend the use of a single tense all over the paragraph or jump from one tense to another without a discernible cause or tense markers to justify their choices. This may be due the fact that these learners use tenses without knowing " their contextual or pragmatic motivations and discourse functions" (Celce-Murcia and Olstain, 2000: 68). Furthermore, feedback obtained from the teachers' questionnaire and classroom observation showed that the UFC grammar teachers' main objective is to develop their learners' grammatical competence. It also showed that they give little importance to the discourse functions of the grammar items, neglecting the fact that these items are often determined by factors beyond the sentence. The present study investigates the effect of raising UFC first year students' consciousness to how the past perfect is used and distributed in longer stretches of sentences in view of making them understand and produce it efficiently and appropriately. To this aim, we conducted an experiment research with two matching groups of 12 students each. The experimental group were taught the past perfect through discourse, taking into account the discourse functions of this tense and also its relation with other tenses such as the past simple and the past continuous whereas the control group were taught the same tense using de- contextualized, sentence-level activities. Both groups were pre-tested at the beginning of the experiment and post-tested at its end. The results of the post test indicated a positive effect of the discourse-based approach as the experimental group outperformed the control group.
An Investigation on the Effect of Teaching Conversation on Developing EFL Learners’ Discourse Competence in Speaking
(University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2020) KHADROUN, Salem; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
with twenty second year students to investigate the effect of teaching the speech action of news announcement through consciousness-raising activities on developing learners’ spoken discourse competence. The data gathered from the teacher questionnaire and classroom observation revealed that the teachers adopted a rather traditional and teacher-centered way of teaching which put focus on learners’ linguistic knowledge and overlooked the development of their conversational competence. The findings obtained from the experimental tests showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in producing syntactically and sequentially better organized conversations with the appropriate use of formulaic language.
COLLOCATIONAL ERROR ANALYSIS:INVESTIGATING LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL MISCOLLOCATIONS IN STUDENTS’ WRITTEN PRODUCTION
(جامعة الجزائر 02 أبو القاسم سعد الله University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2018) belhamel, amina; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
This study was carried out primarily to investigate collocational errors in 100 English written production of Third Year students at Mohammed Lamine Dabaghine University-Setif-2. It seeks to examine the lexical and grammatical collocational errors. An analytical-descriptive exploratory research design adopting a mixed method approach was followed. Also, two questionnaires were distributed to the students and 14 teachers of Written Expression, and a semi-structured interview with Third Year Written Expression teachers was conducted. To detect the errors, a particular reference was made to Taxonomy of Benson’s et al., (1986) modified version and Error Analysis Procedures. The statistical analysis revealed that a total of 396 errors were found in both lexical collocation (259: 65.40%) and grammatical collocation (137: 34.60%).
Exploring the Effect of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension Skill
(UNIVERSITY OF ALGIERS 2. Faculty of Foreign Languages, 2017) Bouzar, Siham; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
Abstract The present study investigates the effect of treatment with five (05) metacognitive strategies namely problem solving, planning and evaluation, mental translation, personal knowledge and direct attention on EFL students’ listening comprehension achievement. In this regard, a longitudinal mixed methods case study was carried out involving one hundred (100) informants belonging to first and second years LMD. The researcher made use of a combination of research instruments to collect data such as two written tests (a pre-test and a post test); retrospective interviews, think-aloud protocols, a Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) as well as learners’ diaries. Listening metacognitive strategy instruction proved to be efficient as it helped in increasing students’ motivation, self-confidence and autonomy.
Metaphors in Newspapers Business Articales: A Study of the Degree of Magister in Linguistics and Didactics
(جامعة الجزائر 02 أبو القاسم سعد الله University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2014) Belabbes, Ali; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
This study deals with worldwide coverage of business news in English and Arabic newspapers. It investigates metaphorical use of language in New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and then compares these expressions to homologous or equivalent expressions used in excerpts and translations from English to Arabic in newspapers. A corpus-based approach has been used within the framework of cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis to investigate ideology in metaphorical use of language. Reflecting upon metaphor and ideology within the context of discourse about economic crisis, the research questions shed light on the values of liberal capitalism embodied in metaphors. Three main conclusions are drawn from the analysis of the data. First, market policies are understood by projecting onto them the image schema of movement along a path towards destinations. Second, bad market is described metaphorically by reference to human body. Third, talk about growth in market as struggle to survive under free trade is drawn from war experience. With regard to practical implications on translation, we argue that if the metaphorical language reflects ideologies, then language change in translation of metaphors reflects different ideological perspectives.
SMS Texting Lexical Deviations and Gender in an EFL Academic Context
(University of Algiers 2 Abou El Kacem Saadallah, 2021) Achili, Noura; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
The study explored SMS texters’ lexical deviations in an EFL academic context. A mixed-method that integrated both a corpus-based methodology and a questionnaire was implemented. The data analysis looked at texting deviated forms and their variation according to the EFL students’ gender and academic level. The results revealed the omission of capital letters as the most frequent type of deviation. The latter was followed by letter/number homophones, contractions, misspellings, and phonetic/non-conventional spellings. The results also highlighted the insignificant role of gender, with both genders texting almost similarly. Regarding the students’ academic level impact on the use of deviant forms, the data showed a noted relation between the use of deviations and the students’ language proficiency as Master students were revealed as the most prolific users of lexical deviations
The Effect of Consciousness-Raising Activities and Instruction on Improving Algerian EFL Learners’ Perception and Production of Complex Word Stress
(University of Algiers 2. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2012) Daghi, Fatima Zohra; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
The present work, a whole of five chapters including an experimental programme, aimed to shed light on the role of classroom instruction and awareness activities in improving Algerian EFL learners’ abilities of perceiving and producing stress in morphologically complex words. Through an experiment conducted on second year students at the department of English, University of Algiers, we attempted to test the effect of the instructional programme based on the consciousness-raising activities on learners’ perception and production of complex word stress. Twenty two students participated in the experiment. They were divided equally into an experimental group and a control group. In order to accomplish the aim of the present research, data was gathered using pre-treatment and post-treatment questionnaires, and pre-treatment and posttreatment tests. The results obtained indicated a positive improvement in the ability to perceive and produce complex word stress among the members of the experimental group. The positive findings of the present experiment are aimed to be applied in the teaching of word stress, in general, and in teaching complex word stress, in particular for EFL learners.
THE EFFECTCONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING TASKS ON IMPROVING EFL STUDENTS' USE OF DISCOURSE MARKERS IN SPEAKING
(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2011) Bouzar, Siham; Hamitouche, Fatiha (Directeur de thèse)
The investigation described in this dissertation aims at studying some aspects of spoken discourse which are discourse markers, and will consider in particular the production of those devices by EFL students of English as well as the effect of consciousness-raising tasks on improving discourse competence and communicative language performance of non-native speakers of English in Algeria. In this context, the case of first year Algerian LMD students in the English department, at the University of Algiers 2 is considered. Indeed, discourse markers of spoken English, such as " you know, I mean, well, see, so, and, but, ...etc" perform an important function in conversation. They have been the subject of investigation in a host of studies focusing on native and non-native speakers and have been assigned a multitude of terminologies and various definitions by several researchers; however, no research has been conducted as far as Algerian EFL learners are concerned. Therefore, the present study will try to answer some issues related to Algerian students' awareness about these items, their usage as well as the factors affecting the latter. Accordingly, a quasi experimental research was adopted consisting of two groups of twenty (20) students each belonging to first year LMD: one constitutes the experimental group while the other represents the control one. The experiment was conducted in three phases during which three techniques were adopted in the collection of the required data; i.e. we employed two written tests (a pre- test and a post- test), two interviews (from which we derived student corpora) and a questionnaire. The study reveals some development in the students' discourse competence as far as the use of spoken discourse markers is concerned; nevertheless, a discrepancy is noticed in the frequency and use of those targeted features when compared with a sub- corpus of native speakers' talks containing 460,050 words, already employed by Fung and Carter (2007: 417), selected from the whole CANCODE pedagogical corpus. The latter comprises 5 million words of English spontaneous speech recorded in a variety of situations namely: transactional, pedagogical, socializing and intimate. Besides, Algerian EFL learners' speaking skill has evolved considerably in comparison with their output before receiving instruction. Nevertheless, they did not reach natives' level of proficiency. Moreover, the investigation unveiled that some discourse markers were overused or underused whereas others were misused or not used at all. Thus, four categories of spoken discourse markers users were distinguished. These included: over users, under users, misusers and no users. Additionally, the findings attributed the reasons affecting Algerian EFL learners' use/ non-use of those discourse devices to three major factors. These include: situational anxiety, delay and inadequate English proficiency.