THE USE OF LANGUAGE AWARENESS IN A SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

Introduction

In this essay I am going to talk about my experience in the course named: Language
awareness a new approach in English grammar teaching-. To do this, I am going to divide
this text in three parts; in the first one, I will expose the things I learned during the course,
in the second part, I will explain the way I was enriched by this new knowledge obtained
during the course and finally, in the third part, I am going to explain why this course was
important and how I can apply the knowledge and the tools for teaching obtained in the
performance of my classes, in the structure of my lesson plans and in my way of teaching.

What did I learn?

In order to explain the things I learned and to show the importance of this course, in
this part of the essay, I will set out what Language Awareness is and its importance in the
contemporary teaching. To do this; I will present, in a short way, its constitution by
showing; precedents theories, the implication of Language Awareness theory and what it is
focus on.

First of all, language awareness is originated from a movement in the UK which

took out from the theories of behaviorism and cognitivist principles of learning and created
a new theory.

In the one hand, behaviorism theory says that students learn through conditions of
behavior and repetition. In other words, students learn because they receive a stimulus and
then they have a response; the process of knowledge has to be through this way of teaching.

On the other hand, cognitivist theory accepts the importance of repetition. However,
this process does not have to come from an isolated repetition; it has to come from an
analysis or process of thinking, better described, the knowledge has come from the interior
of the student.

Language Awareness takes these theories, mixed the best of each and created a new
theory for a Second Language Teaching, which says that repetition is important to get the
knowledge, and it is also important that this knowledge has to come from a process of
thinking. However, in order to this happen, it is necessary that the second language teacher
create and facilitate an environment to the students, in which situations of real life,
communicative activities will be applied. Also, these situations have to include context as
social conventions and general culture of the second language.

How was I enriched by this course?

The way I was enriched by this course was through the techniques and tools that I
obtained. Firstly, when I learned the theory of Language Awareness, at this step I could
realize that a better way of teaching is when my class is focused not only in the
reproduction of a prefect grammar, pronunciation or witting, it is when the students analyze
the situation given for me and also when they think about what they are learning.

Also, I was enriched when I learned the differences between an Old and a Modern
Second Language Teaching. In the first one, teachers teach using techniques based only in
behaviorism theory, in other words, students process of knowledge consists in repetition of
situations given for the teacher, no matter if the student comprehend what was he saying or
not. It is well known that students learn through this technique. However, the
comprehension and the understanding students obtain, through this way of teaching a
second language, is really trivial compared to the second one.

Modern Second Language Teaching, because this way of teaching, apart from
provide teaches tools to facilitate the knowledge to student, make that the classes and the
process of comprehension of students will be acquired through a process of thinking and
analysis of the students, putting away that students take what the teacher says as an ultimate
true.

According with this, if we continue using Old Second Language Teaching, It may
be the case when students face a real situation where they have to use their second language
learned, they, for secure, might be frustrate when they realize that they are not able to
comprehend and communicate the situation they are facing, due to they never, when they
were learning, learned and practice to analyze situation of real life.

In brief, I was enriched by this course because I will change my way of teaching and
I will perform my classes bearing in mind this tools and techniques given in the course,
also, I will avoid as much as possible providing a trivial knowledge to my students using
old fashion teaching techniques.

How will I apply this into my teaching context?

As I mentioned before, during the course I obtained tools and techniques to change and
improve my way of teaching and give students a quality class. Also I leaned a new theory about a
better way to teach for give a better comprehension to students through Language Awareness.

Using these things together I learned how to perform a class using Task based learning, it
has to have three steps; 1- PRE to introduce the topic by activating schema, 2- WHILE which is the
task itself and 3- POST where the students will analyze the topic by themselves. Furthermore, to
perform the task I learned how to include the characteristics which are important to make the
task, these are; it has to include a real situation, it has to be achievable, be meaningful, realistic,
appropriate, with a clear objective and finally it has to have a reflexing stage.

To wrap up, I can say that this course provide me tools and technique to facilitate the
process of knowledge of my students, also facilitate and improve my way of teaching,
furthermore, this course gave me some clues to be a better facilitator of a second language.
 On the other hand, during this course I learned to identify situation and problems which I
as a teacher can face with students in Colegio de Bachilleres and my fellow teachers gave me some
advices to manage those situations. So, to my mind this course was too helpful.

By Elizabeth Tafoya Espinoza