Self-reflection Report on Language Awareness. Course Reflection

Zusammenfassung , 2023 , 13 Seiten , Note: 1

Anglistik - Sonstiges

This paper is a self-reflection report on various core topics of Language Awareness. The main topic of the summarized course is "What is language awareness?".

Table of contents

Meeting 1 – 06.10.22

Meeting 2 – 13.10.22

Meeting 3 – 20.10.22

Meeting 4 – 27.10.22

Meeting 5 – 03.11.22

Meeting 6 – 10.11.22

Meeting 7 – 17.11.22

Meeting 8 – 24.11.22

Meeting 9 – 01.12.22

Meeting 10 – 15.12.22

Meeting 11 – 12.01.22

Conclusion

References:

Meeting 1 – 06.10.22

Despite my late arrival to the course, I was still able to partake in a significant portion of the course requirements. In my opinion, the weekly reports, independent research, and presentation provide ample opportunities to fully engage with the topic of language awareness. The wide range of topic suggestions offered within the course allows for a focus on areas of personal interest. For me, this could include language awareness in listening situations, such as podcasts, TEDx talks, songs, and real-life encounters, or language awareness in the teaching of speaking regarding social or cultural backgrounds.

After receiving initial course information, we quickly delved into the central topic of the course, "What is language awareness?" We formed discussion groups and quickly realized the complexity of the question. Language awareness can encompass everything from being able to use appropriate language structures in real-life contexts, to simply possessing background knowledge of grammar rules, pronunciation, or sentence structures, to understanding social and cultural aspects of language. After a lively debate, we ultimately came to the conclusion that it is difficult to provide a clear definition of language awareness.

Interestingly, we also discussed the necessity of language awareness for both students and teachers. While teachers should be able to demonstrate their own language awareness in the classroom, students may have different needs. As highlighted by Swain and Lapkin (2000), it is important for students to develop their own language awareness in order to fully participate in the classroom and actively engage with the language being taught.

Meeting 2 – 13.10.22

In the last session we talked about different forms of LA awareness regarding the pupils. In this context we discussed the pupils’ engagement with the language after school. On the one hand students should be able to manage life in English and to develop their language skills further on an individual level, on the other hand be comfortable speaking it and in the ideal case hold the level they have achieved. Another central topic of our last session was Borg’s (1994) model of LA for teachers which is divided into three categories:

-Awareness of Language: This category focuses on the linguistic aspects of language, such as grammar, phonology, lexis, and discourse. It also includes knowledge of the language's structure, function, and use.
-Awareness of Learning: This category focuses on understanding how language is learned and the theories of language acquisition. It also includes knowledge of learner-centeredness, heuristics, and collaborative learning.
-Awareness of Teaching: This category focuses on developing skills in language analysis, task design, and interactive learning. It also includes understanding the role of teachers as facilitators and accepting the notion of language as an object of study.

Whereas Awareness of Language can be directly taught and tested, the Awareness of Learning and Teaching is more difficult. However, this is not so much reflected in our teacher education program as it is focused on developing all of those categories.

Meeting 3 – 20.10.22

Language awareness is defined as the "explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use" (Svalberg, 2016, p. 399) by the Association for Language Awareness (ALA). The field covers various topics such as language structure or vocabulary and the function of language in a social or cultural context (Svalberg, 2016). In our last session several of my colleagues presented their research drafts about some of those topics including LA and literature, business English, tv series and many more. Language Awareness in a cultural context facilitates the transmission of socio-cultural knowledge through communicative processes (Kozhevnikova, 2013), which can be acquired to regular exposure of authentic cultural contexts e.g., literature or tv series. Therefore, I am highly looking forward to my colleagues’ results and their classroom implementations.

Meeting 4 – 27.10.22

Due to my absence in the last session, I can only comment on the written word. It seems that most of the presentations have been about movies, series or computer games. LA in this context is, as most of these activities happen outside of the classroom, particularly increasing the exposure to the target language. As McNeil (2019) found out, students who are exposed to games and activities in their free time "are able to notice and reflect upon linguistic practices" and also "examine language outside of gaming contexts." (p. 13). Without proper analysis and guidance framework students are destined to only imitate linguistic and cultural practices in the only world rather than developing the necessary understanding of those (McNeil, 2019). This unfortunately also applies to tv shows and movies.

Meeting 5 – 03.11.22

Critical Language Awareness in the context of my MA research is particularly interesting as Taylor (2018) claims that " [...] this awareness includes understanding that there is more to teaching and learning a language than grammar and vocabulary." (p. 1). Yes, indeed there is more to language than that, however, the time frame in which the students should be made aware of all the aspects of "English" is simply too short. Therefore, it would be interesting regarding Grammatical Language Awareness (GLA) which structures, on average, take more time to be understood and on the other hand how the understanding is facilitated: do teachers need to explain explicitly or are the structures eventually acquired through rich input?

Considering a natural order of acquisition (Dulay & Burt, 1974; Krashen, 1981) the question arises how much of a focus should even be but on grammar regarding language awareness? Wouldn't it more effective to focus on other topics (culture, pronunciation, vocabulary)? For example, the 3rd person s is acquired rather late (Ellis et al., 2009) but is still taught rather early. Naturally, the development of the necessary language awareness to grasp that concept takes time. Consequently, we could also ask the question, in how far does a wrong use of the third person s impair meaning and disrupt conversations compared to a lack of cultural awareness?

Meeting 6 – 10.11.22

Last week we had the pleasure of hearing about several interesting presentation topics, and I want to focus on A.'s topic Sociocultural Awareness through role plays. According to Leech (1983, as cited in Kasanga & Lwanga-Lumu, 2007) "an apology is a redressive speech act for a face-threatening act [...] to restore social harmony after an infraction of a social rule." Consequently, the need for an apology varies depending on the social and cultural context the incident happened in. Hereby Kasanga & Lwanga-Lumu (2007) refer to Clyne's (1994) risk of miscommunication: because of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences between conversational partners, the interpretation and realization of the apology might differ and therefore be misevaluated, mislabeled and could lead to stereotyping. Therefore, A.'s work can be considered crucial for the development of a certain amount of cultural sensitivity (awareness) in the area of apologies.

Meeting 7 – 17.11.22

In the last session, one of the topics that we covered was dyslexia in the classroom. It was pointed out that the number of dyslexic students has been growing over the last decades, which makes it a veritable challenge for teachers. Hornstra et al. (2010) argue that teachers tend to stigmatize students with disabilities which results in lower expectations and a different treatment for those students. Whereas for some areas a different treatment might be necessary (depending on the schools’ policies on grading students with dyslexia), it does not generally infer that students with dyslexia are less smart than their nondisabled peers. Wolff & Lundberg (2002) mentioned in their study that dyslexia is oftentimes associated with artistic creativity and their results indicate that dyslexia is far more prevalent in art academies than in other tertiary institutions. Consequently, we have to give dyslexic students a change to develop in their own way.

Meeting 8 – 24.11.22

This week’s entry is mainly about my own research presentation of Grammatical Language Awareness. Some of the discussion revolved around the issue of teaching, learning and acquisition of grammatical structures as implicit or explicit forms. Hulstijn (2005) provides a set of definitions that clarify the terms in a way: according to him, instruction that resembles a traditional approach including rule explanation is considered explicit, whereas implicit instruction does not follow that principle. Explicit learning occurs when there is a conscious intention to learn more about structural regularities (hence grammatical rules), whereas implicit learning does not, as it happens unconsciously. Whether the knowledge that results from learning, regardless of its kind, is of implicit or explicit nature depends on the ability to verbalize what has been learned (Hulstijn, 2005).

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• Hochschule: Johannes Kepler Universität Linz
• Note: 1
• Autor: Axel Kolbeinsson (Autor:in)
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2023
• Seiten: 13
• Katalognummer: V1334050
• ISBN (PDF): 9783346876669
• ISBN (Buch): 9783346876676
• Sprache: Englisch
• Schlagworte: self-reflection, report, language, awareness, course, reflection