Designing a Study Program for the Teaching of Legal English within the LMD System

Abstract

English for Legal Purposes (ELP), as a branch of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), has recently been gaining invaluable consideration. In the Algerian higher education context, the ELP course outline should be implemented in the university, especially in accordance with recent reforms. The present investigation aims to design a study program for teaching legal English within the LMD system, considering teaching conditions and law students’ needs. The objective reacts to a problematic situation comprising a net of parameters and factors. The latter stems from English status in Algeria for sociolinguistic and geopolitical reasons and the new step ahead to promote English academic visibility, which per se supports economic activity. ELP is perceived as the bridge that best carries educational objectives to professional ones and vice versa through the LMD system. However, the shortage of available adequate ELP courses, the lack of research based on rigorous methodology, and the scarce studies reported in the literature make it clear that an urgent course is required. The fourth null hypothesis stated that there would be no difference between the average score of the experimental group on the diagnostic and post tests, whereas it was alternatively hypothesized through H1 that there would be a difference in favor of the post test. The present research used a variety of paradigms and cross-sectional designs in addition to the triangulation process by sources and methods to confirm or reject the hypotheses. The sources comprised teachers, students, and course designer, whereas the instruments comprised tests, questionnaires, interviews. The study participants were law students and teachers of English from the Department of Law at the University of Batna1. The study employed a population of 502 law students from which a sample was randomly selected. The sampling process included 100 students assigned to the treatment group and 100 law students assigned to the comparison group, where 20 students were selected from each speciality. In addition to that, four teachers of English participated in this investigation. The descriptive method was employed to identify the law learners’ needs using a mixed-method paradigm. The needs analysis of the collected data using the process of crosschecking the different sources’ perceptions allowed the design of the needed course. The latter contained legal language characteristics, legal culture components, and the appropriate teaching method elements. However, the experimental method was adopted during, notably, the delivery of the designed study program. The evaluation revealed that the study program comprised some challenges addressed and then overcome. The mean difference between the scores obtained by the treatment group in the diagnostic and post tests was statistically significant in favor of the latter, where the Student’s t-test was 8,34. This result was compared to the critical table of values, considering the degree of freedom, the type of hypothesis (one-tailed right sided), and the significance level (0.05). The comparison showed that the Student’s t-test value is more significant than the standard value of 1.753 in the critical values table, which means that there is a statistical significance in favor of the post-test, thereby rejecting H0 and accepting the alternative hypothesis H1 set at the beginning of the research. This thesis is believed to contribute to understanding the situation of English teaching for law students in the EFL context ii of Algeria. It also offers insights into the law students’ needs and what might conform to the objectives of the LMD system. Keywords: Legal Culture, Legal English, LMD System, Needs Analysis, Study Program.