Importance Of Language Awareness

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It is absolutely important for language teachers all over the world to know how the language that they are teaching works. They need to have a conscious awareness of how it is used by language users. No matter if they are native or non-native speakers of that language. As Kumaravadivelu (2003) has mentioned, native speaking teachers have generally acquired their L1 in their childhood unconsciously. Although, they might know the underlying system of their language intuitively, they do not have the explicit knowledge which is required in order to give an adequate explanation to the learners. Non-native teachers, on the other hand, might have learned their L2 consciously. Nevertheless, they still lack an adequate language competence and confidence …show more content…

To such an end, language teachers themselves need to be consciously and critically aware of the ideological and social factors governing text and talk to be able to promote language learners’ consciousness-raising, leading toward their empowerment. Discussing language awareness (LA), we need to distinguish between different orientations toward it, known as general language awareness and critical language awareness. General language awareness is mostly based on an awareness of linguistic and sociolinguistic features of language usage. According to Fairclough (1992), language awareness is a kind of conscious attention to language properties and also language use as an element of teaching language. One of the prominent features of language awareness is that because learners use their utmost attention in the process of learning, a deeper understanding and learning happens. By paying deliberate attention to language features, language learners’ awareness of the differences between their own linguistic performance and that of native speakers become conspicuous. As a result, they become more ready to acquire different language features since these features have become much more salient into their …show more content…

CLA focuses on an awareness of social, political and contextual factors with regard to language use. It is based upon the relationship between language and social context. As Freire (2005) believed, we need to have a critical awareness of the word in order to develop a critical awareness of the

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