The Internet and Cultural / Critical Consciousness in Teaching English Literature for Algerian Students at Bejaia University.

Abstract

Cultural consciousness imposes itself each time there is contact with the other / a foreigner to one’s own community. Consequently, it is impossible to teach English language and literature for Algerian students without exposing the cultural issues entailed in the process. Consequently, and in a globalized world wherein both power and prominence are in the hands of the wealthiest, usually represented by the West, students of foreign language and literature should possess a critical consciousness that permits them to perceive the manipulated Western images concerning African identity aimed at absorbing them as any manufactured clichés fashioned for the purpose of colonizing the mind. Subsequently, this article explores the use of the internet, and the literary representations of the other to analyze the interaction of the students with the circulating cultural (negative) images, and their response to them. Furthermore, it uses the experience of Google Group Method that helps to discuss and fashion the critical consciousness of the students without inciting them to hate or reject the other’s culture(s), or more dangerously to disdain/obliterate their own.