Page 171 - Beyond Methods

Fostering language awareness 159
case in departmentalized secondary schools. The American and British educators, therefore, emphasize the need for secondary school subject teachers to think of the language of math, or the lan- guage of science, or the language of history, as something that should be explicitly taught along with mathematical problems, sci- entific concepts, or historical events. They therefore suggest that secondary school teachers, regardless of their subject specializa- tion, should be trained in areas such as the nature and function of language, language and thought, and language and culture (Haw- kins, 1984, p. 28). In other words, they should be equipped with the knowledge and skill necessary “to consider how language is used in their fields and then think of their curriculum as a dual curriculum with a double agenda it implies” (Goodman, 1986, p. 31).
General Language Awareness in Action
While there are minor variations between the British and American approaches to actual classroom practices aimed at promoting lan- guage awareness, they largely focus on the properties of language structure and language usage with particular reference to literacy skills (reading and writing). Furthermore, in spite of their well- intentioned emphasis on language across the curriculum, their ef- forts were mostly directed at language classes since these classes, whether L1 or L2, easily lend themselves to metalinguistic activities through which participants can objectify a language and talk about it. They showed that there are interesting ways in which learners’ attention can be explicitly drawn to the logic of a linguistic sub- system be it spelling, intonation, or grammar.
It is only natural for language learners to expect some logic in the way a language operates. The fact that certain language subsystems defy logic can itself be considered an opportunity for creating lan- guage awareness. The English language is a prime candidate if one is looking for a language full of what appear to be irregularities. Calling it “a zany logic-defying tongue,” Stephen Pinker (1994, p. 18) reminds us that English is a language in which “one drives on a parkway and parks in a driveway, plays at a recital and recites at a play.” Nothing perhaps testifies to the “zaniness” of the English language more than its spelling system. As Hawkins (1984, p. 118) points out, there are at least nine different spellings for the sound of the vowel [I:] in English: believe, receive, people, key, leave, ma- chine, quay, be, and see). Similarly, one is often reminded of the