Language Awareness and Its Multiple Possibilities for the L2 Classroom

Abstract

A movement called Language Awareness has received some attention in L2 acquisition and foreign language pedagogy circles during the past decade. Language Awareness, according to Donmall (1985), refers to “a person's sensitivity to and conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life” (p. 7). The primary goal of this movement is to encourage the development of language awareness among L2 learners in order to enhance L2 learning as well as to foster greater linguistic tolerance and cross‐cultural awareness among L2 learners. The purpose of this article is to initiate readers to the Language Awareness movement and to demonstrate how language awareness can he used as a pedagogical tool in the L2 classroom. Sample activities are provided for classroom application.

The Impact of Textual Input Enhancement and Explicit Rule Presentation on Iranian Elementary EFL Learners’ Intake of Simple Past Tense

“…6, No. 1;2013 0/05, homogeneity of variances is confirmed. As can be seen in table four, level of significance is 0/141 > 0/05; therefore, there is no significant difference among the groups in pretest.…”

“…6, No. 1;2013 of treatment is significant. It means that there is a significant difference among pretest, first posttest and delayed posttest.…”

“…However, case studies showed less than satisfactory learning outcomes by individuals who were exposed to natural learning environments. For Simard & Wong (2004) "a pure focus on meaning in l2 learning does not lead to high levels of linguistic accuracy' ' (p. 96). Trevise (1993, cited in Gascoigne, 2006 claims that the removal of grammatical and pedagogical metalanguage from the communicative classroom can result lots of linguistic deficiencies.…”

Motivating Students in the EFL Classroom: A Case Study of Perspectives

“…Simard and Wong (2004) support this development of second language awareness as it not only improves second language learning, but it also promotes greater cross cultural understanding among the second language learners. Taking this identity theory further and not excluding previous motivation theories, Dornyei (2010b) has recently described this new approach in second language learning as the 'L2 motivational self esteem' which links the learning of the foreign language to one's personal 'core' or identity.…”

Phonological Memory and Implications for the Second Language Classroom

“…In addition, learners might also be trained via language awareness strategies (e.g., Simard & Wong, 2004) to make phonological, lexical, and semantic associations between their existing lexical knowledge (both L1 and L2) and newly encountered L2 lexical items. Increased reliance on long-term knowledge for learning would therefore help to reduce the processing load on PM, which may be particularly beneficial for learners with less efficient phonological processing skills.…”