Language Awareness and CLIL
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LANGUAGE AWARENESS AND CLIL
INTRODUCTION
The term Language Awareness (LA) covers a broad range of issues relating to learning, teaching and using languages. These include knowledge about a language itself; how people best learn languages and how they communicate in real-life situations. Correspondingly, it involves achieving deeper understanding of how language is used to achieve specific goals in communication. These may be largely positive, as in building synergy through relationships, and effective transfer of ideas; or largely negative, as when language is used to influence people through manipulation and discrimination. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a generic term that refers to the teaching of subjects in a different language from the mainstream language of instruction. It is an educational approach in which diverse methodologies are used which lead to dual-focussed education where attention is given to both topic and language of instruction. ‘. . . achieving this twofold aim calls for the development of a special approach to teaching in that the non-language subject is not taught in a foreign language but with and through a foreign language (Eurydice 2006, p. 8). Applications of CLIL are multifarious depending on educational level, environment and the specific approach adopted. The learning outcomes tend to focus on achieving higher levels of awareness and skill in using language in real-life situations, alongside the learning of subject matter. This approach can be viewed as being neither language learning, nor subject learning, but rather an amalgam of both. Successful application involves utilizing and developing a broad range of language awareness capacities. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
The development of foreign language learning has clearly been influenced by various trends over the past 50 years. While these trends shifted from predominant focus on ‘form’ to ‘meaning’, and corresponding methodological approaches were applied, three major operational issues have remained of key importance. The first involves ensuring a high degree of learner motivation when teaching groups of J. Cenoz and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 6: Knowledge about Language, 233–246. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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D AV I D M A R S H
individuals who have diverse preferred learning styles. The second involves the distinction and overlap between language acquisition and language learning as relating to optimal learning environments. The third concerns the amount of time, which can be allocated to language learning within the educational curriculum. The language awareness movement developed in relation to both first and second language learning during the 1980s (Donmall, 1985; Hawkins, 1984; see also Van Essen, Language Awareness and Knowledge about Language: A Historical Overview, Volume 6 and Cots, Knowledge about Language in the Mother Tongue and Foreign Language Curricula, Volume 6). Originally focussing on explicit knowledge of gramma
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