Language awareness in pre-service teacher educationfocusing on language, teaching and learning in university language courses addressed to english majors

Abstract

This study focuses on language awareness in university language courses that form part of the English Studies degree programme, the relevant degree in the training of secondary school language teachers in Spain. Language awareness plays an important role for language learners in general, and it is even more the case for those who are training as foreign language teachers and experts. This study focuses specifically on language courses for two reasons. First, language improvement is a priority for these students, given their academic and professional orientation. Second, because of their university context, these courses lend themselves to the integration of different types of language-related competences, which are addressed in other courses of the same degree (e.g. linguistics and ELT methodology courses). This integration of competences coincides with a view of professional language awareness which involves the capacity of fulfilling the roles of language user, language analyst and teacher (Edge, 1988; Wright, 1991, 2002). Apart from that, university language courses can also be considered to form part of the 'apprenticeship of observation' (Lortie, 1975) of future language teachers, as students are exposed to certain models and views of language and learning. Therefore, this study explores how language awareness is approached in university language courses of the ES degree. Specifically, it aims to find out how metalinguistic activity is carried out in the classroom, the language topics that are object of reflection and the metalanguage used, and the models of language and learning that are more or less explicitly transmitted. Using mainly a qualitative methodology that draws on the tenets of ethnography and discourse analysis, this study is based on classroom observation and interviews with instructors and students. The analysis of these data has yielded insights into what participants do and what their views are in relation to language and learning. This study