Language awareness: a missing link in language teacher education?

Language awareness and language learning

“…In a discussion of LA in relation to teacher education, Borg (1994: 62, While Wright & Bolitho's (1993) paper focuses more specifically on linguistic awareness, Borg (1994) emphasizes the broader educational aims of LA teacher education and LA methodology. Below I will expand on the LA methodology issues in relation to the five characteristics listed.…”

“…Methods and techniques more commonly associated with the LA classroom are, for example, input enhancement; discovery-type, inductive tasks; dictogloss and text reconstruction; and open-ended discussion tasks on authentic or adapted texts (Wright & Bolitho 1993;Thornbury 1997aThornbury , b, 2001). In general, approaches and techniques which make use of or engender conscious knowledge and which stimulate engagement with the language in a specific context, within a constructivist framework, are consistent with an LA pedagogy.…”

“…6 Borg connects discovery-type, i.e. inductive tasks, with LA methodology and although a few authors consider that consciousness raising can be either inductive or deductive (Mohamed 2004) the inductive type is the most common (Wright 1991;Wright & Bolitho 1993;Thornbury 2001).…”

“…Regarding the extent of teachers' LA, teachers thus take on three roles in regard to language, those of user, analyst and teacher (Edge 1988, cited in Cots & Arno 2005. Hence, they require a high level of language proficiency, plus linguistic and pedagogic knowledge (Wright 1991(Wright , 2002. Andrews & McNeill (2005), in a study of three good language teachers, in Hong Kong and the UK, attempt to identify what characterizes such teachers' LA.…”

Introducing Hyperbole as Pragmatic Aspect in Teaching Language

“…It helps students to learn the language by easy way and independent work. Leading ELT specialists Wright & Bolitho (1993) discuss the importance of Language Awareness in teacher education, whereas statement can be equally applied to learners as well. A linguistically-aware learners can accomplish tasks like speaking language accurately, having language competence, understanding language in use, and interpreting native speakers.…”