The teaching of the linguistic concept of symbol using cultural symbols for a FLE audience

This article aims to analyze a didactic approach to teach the linguistic concept of symbol in a context of French as a foreign language (FFL). The teachers who taught the linguistics courses found it difficult to inculcate concepts such as symbol to Arabic-speaking learners enrolled in a translation specialization. Therefore, they had to change the way of teaching the concept through the implementation of activities about cultural representations in FFL classes. This method helped the students to assimilate the abstract concept of symbol and to acquire a method to apprehend them. Our article is divided into three parts. In the first part, we present the theoretical framework based on the concept of symbol and its relationship with culture. Then, we proceed to the description of the socio-cultural as well as pedagogical characteristics of our context of study and we analyze the difficulties of teaching symbols. In the last part, we highlight the didactic approaches implemented by French teachers in a linguistics course to facilitate the learning of the concept of symbol, through the learning of French symbols by giving concrete examples from French culture.