LANGUAGE AWARENESS IN ELT CLASSROOM

Keltouma GUERCH (CRMEF OUJDA)

 Presentation outline
■ Brainstorming
■ Introduction
■ Definitions
■ Some challenges of L.A. in ELT
■ Areas of L.A
■ Hands on tasks
■ Conclusion: Q/A
 Brainstorming

■ What is Language awareness in teaching?

 INTRODUCTION
"Language is as important to human beings as water is to fish. Yet, it often seems
that we go through life as unaware of language as we suppose the average fish is of
the water it swims in.” (Van Lier, 1995. Introducing Language Awareness)

Studies show that there is a connection between a literacy environment, linguistic

knowledge, and academic achievement at school and at academic institutions.
Students with poor literacy backgrounds are generally expected to encounter
difficulties utilizing both spoken and written language. (Carlisle, 2003; 2010; Green,
2009)
 INTRODUCTION
Language and reading researchers currently recommend that all teachers,
regardless of their specialty, should exhibit clear mastery of language (Fillmore &
Snow, 2002). Because many of these teachers will be required to teach language
lessons (language, linguistics, reading comprehension, …),they must have
complete basic command of a language’s grammatical rules, usage, structure,
and historical changes.

When students become teachers, they may not be called on to teach these
subjects directly; instead, they will use them as basic knowledge or as the setting
for educational decisions involved in teaching reading, writing, and oral
communication (Andrews, 2008; Attardo & Brown, 2005; Bigelow & Ranney, 2005;
Hislam & Cajkler, 2005; Harper & Rennie, 2009).
 INTRODUCTION
■ Knowledge about language will help a teacher make intelligent choices regarding
study materials, tasks and teaching goals, including adjustments for students’
overall literacy capabilities and their morpho-syntactical skill levels (Bigelow &
Ranney, 2005; Fillmore & Snow, 2002). [Osnat Argaman & Vered Vaknin-Nusbaum.
Language Awareness of Teacher Trainees. Journal of Language Teaching and
Research. 7(1):9 · December 2015]

■ Language is a vehicle for learning.

 What is the theory
behind language awareness?

Conversational and academic language

Conversational language
1- Conversational language: requires skills
to understand and take part in everyday
conversations and activities. These basic
language skills are used in informal
communication, such as buying lunch at
school, talking on the phone to friends, or
playing sports…. Body language, facial
expression help a lot.
 Academic language
2- Academic language: refers to more formal language which is essential for
students to successfully demonstrate what they have learned and achieved.

This includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing about content in a

specific subject area, for example reading about a particular event in history
or discussing a new mathematical concept. … clues that help decide
meaning are often reduced or absent, e.g. absence of graphics and pictures.
. For example, a passage in a textbook may not include any pictures to
support what learners are expected to read.

Language also becomes more complex, and new ideas, concepts and
language are all presented to students at the same time.

Ac. Lge. requires deeper thinking skills, such as comparing, classifying,

analysing, evaluating and inferring.

Ac. Lge. gets more difficult as students advance in levels of education.

 Definitions of L.A
■ “Language awareness can be defined as an understanding of the human faculty of
language and its role in thinking, learning and social life. It includes awareness of
power and control through language, and the intricate relationships between
language and culture.” (Van Lier, 1995)

■ Being language aware means you understand the possible challenges that
language presents to learning. These challenges might arise because a student is
learning a subject through an additional language or it might be the first time a
student has come across certain vocabulary or structures in their first language. A
teacher who is ‘language aware’ understands why students face these difficulties
and what they can do to support students.
 SOME CHALLENGES OF L.A. IN ELT

■ WHAT CHALLNEGES COULD YOU THINK OF

 SOME CHALLENGES OF L.A. IN ELT

■ INTERLANGUAGE CHALLENGES
■ INTRALANGUAGE CHALLENGES
 INTERLANGUAGE V.S. INTRALANGUAGE

■ Interlanguage hypothesis refers to the language produced by the learners when they use their own
version of the foreign language…  relates to the phenomenon of lge transfer
■ Intralingual relations: e.g. when the learners tend to generalize rules they learnt in L2. e.g. the use of
the plural “s” in every word they encounter.
■ Contrastive analysis: learners perceive the target lge in terms of their native lge or other lges
■ Error analysis
 Areas of language awareness
■ Areas to focus on when dealing with L.A. include but are not limited to:
– a world of languages - many languages around us and in the world, language families,
similarities and differences, including written (script) and oral form
– my languages and how I learn languages - language learning strategies
– 'knowledge about' the target language and 'how the language works' - including a comparative
approach with other languages, particular things known by the students
– 'pragmatics' - the appreciation of register, genre,...
– enjoying language and playing with language - emphasis on form (written and oral), poetry, word
games (word chain, rule chain, Spelling Bee,…), tongue twisters,..
– 'why languages?', can be seen as an awareness of the importance of languages in many
spheres of life and work.
– Social justice: use language while taking into account the learners’ socio-economic
backgrounds,
– Components of language: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence and text structure, …
– Levels of formality/informality,
– Error analysis,
– …,
 HANDS ON TASKS
■ Suggest tasks that could highlight students’ awareness of the language(s) they use
in speaking and/or writing in an ELT classroom context

– Clues
■ remember your own experience as an EL learner: speaking & writing
■ What factors affected your output?
■ Were you to encounter such problems, how would you explain these issues to your
own students?
■ How did your teachers capitalize on your L1?
CONCLUSION