CHAPTER

25
Materials for Language Awareness
Rod Bolitho

Introduction
Very few modern coursebooks incorporate activities for raising language aware-
ness, despite widespread recognition that awareness-raising tasks encourage
learners to discover and make sense of language for themselves, and that learners,
even at the beginner level, have already acquired a linguistic and conceptual
framework which would allow them to approach a new language from a position
of strength rather than of enforced helplessness and teacher-dependency. The
trend is reinforced by a reluctance by coursebook writers to depart from the
present – practise – produce paradigm for grammar teaching and by the con-
tinued insistence in grammar practice materials on using ‘cooked’ and decon-
textualized single sentence examples as a basis for their exercise materials (see
Murphy, 1985, and Swan and Walter, 1999, for examples of this). In real com-
munication, however, language hardly ever exists at single sentence level, and
meaning can only be successfully decoded by understanding the complex web of
patterns in written and spoken discourse. This requires work on features such as
lexical and grammatical cohesion, ellipsis and substitution, cultural references,
speaker/writer attitudes and intentions and tense/time relationships, as well as
on the grammatical, lexical and phonological features which are traditionally
emphasized in language systems courses on teacher-training programmes. An
awareness-raising approach can help learners to recognize these features and
discuss their importance in the secure environment of the classroom before
engaging with them in real contexts.
The compromises here are evident. The sentence is a wonderfully convenient
teaching tool. It can be written quickly on a board, used quickly and easily for
turn-taking in class, broken down and analysed into its constituent parts. Authors
and teachers alike are clearly reluctant to abandon it and to enter the minefield
of real texts with all its apparent chaos and hidden traps. Yet, until learners are
given the opportunity to grapple with these complexities, it is unlikely that they
will emerge from their language courses prepared for the encounter with real
language. In this respect, teaching materials continue to lag behind insights from
applied linguistics (see Ellis, 1997, for a discussion of the value of consciousness-
raising tasks in the teaching and learning of grammar) and thinkers about lan-
guage (see, for example, Lewis, 1993, who offers an observe – hypothesize –
experiment as an alternative to present – practise – produce in approaching the
 25. Materials for Language Awareness 423

teaching and learning of new language). Lessons from teachers’ handbooks on

language, such as those by Bolitho and Tomlinson (1995), which deal with lan-
guage awareness from a pedagogical perspective, McCarthy (1991), which makes
available key insights from discourse analysis, and Arndt et al., (2000), which
present a sociolinguistically rooted approach to real language, have yet to filter
down in any significant way into teaching materials or classroom practice. Some
coursebooks have made attempts to include some language awareness activities
(see Tomlinson et al., 2001) but none of them have yet done so in systematic or
rigorous ways.
Yet the task for writers of coursebooks and language practice materials is not
that difficult. The reader is invited to consider the following activity in the light of
the above discussion (see Sample 1).

SAMPLE 1 – for intermediate and/or advanced students

Phrasal verbs.

1. (homework)
Collect at least five examples each of phrasal verbs in use, either from
spoken or written sources. Write each example, in context, on a card or slip
of paper.
2. In class, form groups of four. Present your examples briefly to each other,
and sort them into categories of your own making. Note down anything
interesting that you discover ‘along the way’.
3. Each group should present its findings to the rest of the class, using a
poster or an overhead transparency.
4. Note down comments and queries from the rest of the class, including the
teacher.
5. In your original groups consult grammar books and dictionaries to check
out what you have discovered, and revise your categories and conclusions
according to what you find out.
6. You now have a way of ‘organizing’ your knowledge of phrasal verbs. Add
new verbs to each category as you meet them.

Commentary

This activity encourages learners to investigate a language point independently

and collaboratively. They will discover ways of organizing phrasal verbs according
to meaning, form and behaviour, through exploring their lexical and grammat-
ical features for themselves before consulting reference books. Many learners will
establish categories that do not seem to be valid at first sight, but it is important
that they have done their own research and thinking on the topic, and have
learned to use the reference books to check this out. Since grammarians and
lexicographers themselves cannot agree on a uniform categorization of phrasal
verbs, nor even on what a phrasal verb is or is not, the learners’ own categories are
424 Rod Bolitho 25. Materials for Language Awareness 424

likely to be good enough for their own purposes. Typically, in this activity, they
will encounter the differences between adverb particles and prepositions, the
‘separability’ of ‘verb + particle’ constructions, literal vs. figurative meaning and
the frequency of phrasal verbs in informal contexts. The groups I have worked
with have found all this out for themselves, and have developed and tested a
number of hypotheses about phrasal verbs along the way. The learning experi-
ence has depth and lasting value for them.

A Suggested Framework for Language Awareness Activities

It is not feasible within the limited scope of this chapter to illustrate the full range
of exercise and activity types for language awareness work. However, it is possible
to offer guidance on the key ingredients of a language awareness activity. These
are given here to provide readers with a framework for writing their own materials.

● The starting point is usually language data of some kind. This may include
authentic texts (spoken or written), textbook extracts, extracts from reference
books, samples of learner language, learners’ beliefs and constructs about
language, etc. The data may be used in isolation or comparatively (as in Sample
1, where learners start with extracts from language in use, develop their own
constructs and then compare them with ‘authorized’ versions in reference
books).
● The next step is the exploitation of the data through tasks which may require
learners to explore, to make comparisons, to answer questions, to take notes,
to guess or hypothesize, to classify or to categorize. Some of these task types are
exemplified in the sample activity above.
● A good task will trigger one or more of the following cognitive processes: ana-
lysing, analogizing, applying existing knowledge to new contexts, revising
existing beliefs and constructs, synthesizing old and new knowledge, evaluating
evidence from data, etc. Both higher and lower-order thinking skills (Bloom
and Kratwohl, 1965) are involved here, but there is an emphasis on critical and
independent thinking rather than on the simple fulfilment of routine tasks
such as gap-filling or substitution exercises which many learners can manage
blindfold.
● Finally, language awareness activities lend themselves to all the familiar modes
of work, in and out of class: pair or group work, individual work, whole class
work, or self-access work. It is worth noting, however, that many language
awareness activities are open-ended in nature, reflecting the ambiguities and
complexities which characterize real language in use. This means that there is
often no single ‘right’ answer (see the commentaries in Bolitho and Tomlinson
(1995) for an example of this).

This chapter began with an expression of regret that language awareness work
has not yet found its way into mainstream published materials. Perhaps that is too
much to hope for in the short term, given the conservatism of most publishing
 25. Materials for Language Awareness 425

houses and the washback effect of public examinations. However, most teachers and
authors know, deep down, that there is much more to language than the coursebooks
would have us and our learners believe, and that there is a need, at the very least, to
supplement existing materials with a more honest and open approach to the intricacies
and complexities of real language in use. There is no guarantee that language
awareness work will have an immediate impact on learners’ ability to use language
fluently and accurately, but there is no doubt that it will engage them in thinking
critically about how language is used for different purposes, and that it will give a real
context to their struggles with language systems.