INVESTIGATING BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS USING ENGLISH AS A MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION The Case of Biology Teachers and Students at Larbi Tébessi University – Tébessa

Abstract

Learning scientific subjects through a foreign/second language is a widespread approach of education in higher educational institutions. Accordingly, this study explores the problems that biology teachers and students at Larbi Tébessi University face with the currently used medium of instruction. The study further investigates biology teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the use of English as a medium of instruction to teach biology modules. Accordingly, two hypotheses have been formulated; the first one suggests that students and teachers would have positive attitudes towards using English as a medium of instruction in teaching biology modules, and the second proposes that biology teachers and students would face certain problems with French as an instructional language. Thus, a sample of 25 teachers and 500 students responded to semi open-ended questionnaires about the use of English to teach biology subjects. The obtained results suggest a general positive attitude among the majority of both teachers and students towards the use of English for instruction at the Department of Biology. However, a considerable number of participants have shown hesitation about the implementation of an EMI-based programme with regard to the current educational policy and English language teaching in middle and secondary education. In this sense, this study has certain implications related to language education problems encountered by both teachers and students.