Teacher Language Awareness
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TEACHER LANGUAGE AWARENESS
INTRODUCTION
Teacher language awareness (TLA) is a label applied to research and teacher development activity that focuses on the interface between what teachers know, or need to know, about language and their pedagogical practice. In principle, the concerns of TLA are relevant to teachers of all subjects. Generally, however, although by no means exclusively, most TLA activity relates to teachers of language (L1 or L2—in this review L2 refers to any language other than L1), their cognitions (knowledge, beliefs and understandings) about the specific language they teach and the ways in which those cognitions might potentially impact upon their teaching. The conceptualisation of TLA in the literature is constantly evolving: it has moved on from a rather narrow concentration on knowledge about language (KAL) to incorporate teachers’ cognitions more broadly, both about language in general and about the specific language they teach, as well as (in the case of L2 teachers) their awareness of their students’ developing interlanguage (see, for example, Wright, 2002). While acknowledging the wide-ranging relevance of TLA, this chapter focuses on teachers of language, with particular reference to the subject matter cognitions of L2 teachers, since these have been the focus of most published TLAwork. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
Teachers’ KAL and the potential importance of that knowledge in teaching and learning is now an area of attention and concern worldwide, especially in relation to debates about teacher professionalism (see, for example, Fillmore and Snow, 2000, for discussion in the US context). However, much of the early systematic attention towards such issues in relation to language teaching emerged in Europe, especially in the UK. Although a number of factors may have contributed to this development, two unrelated stimuli seem to have been particularly significant: the growth of interest in Language Awareness (LA) among teachers of the L1 and/or modern foreign languages, especially from the early 1980s (see the various chapters on LA in this volume for a more detailed discussion) and the development of private-sector pre-service TEFL courses incorporating a focus on language analysis. J. Cenoz and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 6: Knowledge about Language, 287–298. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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STEPHEN J. ANDREWS
LA came to prominence in the UK as a ‘grassroots’ movement in the late 1970s/early 1980s, as teacher frustration with learner underachievement in both L1 and L2 led to the creation of local schemes aimed at inspiring learners’ curiosity about language as a uniquely fascinating characteristic of human behaviour. The term ‘Knowledge About Language’ (KAL) is used in much of the related literature of that time, especially in the UK (see, for example, Carter, 1990; Van Essen, Language Awareness and Knowledge about Language: A Historical Overview, Volume 6 and Cots, Knowledge about Language in the Mother Tong
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