Critical Language Awareness

Critical Language Awareness

• 1.
  Mirza Adam The Impactof Critical Language Awareness in ESL Classrooms
• 2.
  What is CriticalLanguage Awareness? Critical Language Awareness "highlights how language conventions and language practices are invested with power relations and ideological processes which people are often unaware of.“ - Fairclough (1992)
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   CLA isa prerequisite for Critical Discourse Analysis  CLA is the means through which language use widens the learning and teaching horizon.  CLA advocates the fact language teaching and learning go beyond, rather than ‘... sheer knowledge of text on the basis of grammar.’ (Donmall, 1985)
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  CLA deals withlanguage learning and teaching as: ‘...an interdisciplinary research approach to the study of communication that views language as a form of communal practice and focal point is to study the ways social and political domination are reproduced by written and verbal style.’
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  What is CriticalLanguage Awareness?  Language is never neutral  “language is never neutral’’  “power, hierarchy, dominance, contestation, resistance, transformation are all embedded in language”  What’s the problem?  “they're just words”  “we just want them to speak more standard English - it will help them”  What do we do?  CLA is “in danger of becoming an overly- theorized and under-applied enterprise”  Applications for media  Applications for education
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  Examining Ideology throughCLA -Many teachers view their students non-standard speech as "something to eradicate“ -“subscribing to an ideology of linguistic supremacy” -Needs to be a revisiting of language education in the classroom
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  CLA as anapproach to teach English as a Second Language with the following objectives:  To develop an awareness of Critical Language in ESL classrooms  To explore the impact of CLA in language learning  An adaptation of some of the techniques for language learning and teaching  To explore the power relations in the language classrooms
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  Aim of theResearch  The aim of this research is to investigate the role and impact of critical language awareness in ESL classrooms in AMU from a teacher’s as well as a learner’s perspective.
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  Research Questions  Q.Why is it important to give more attention to critical language awareness as a concept in order to enhance language acquisition?  Q. How can CLA help a learner/language user to be more appropriate and confident?  Q. Is it necessary for a language user to have a vivid concept of Critical Language Awareness in order to achieve appropriacy? Why/why not?  Q. How far is it feasible to make learners critically aware of the Second Language? What impact or difference will it make to them?
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  Application of CLAin Education Discourse  Begin to create awareness in students of sociolinguistic variation "dialect awareness“  "Ethnography of Speaking" -Dell Hymes (1964,1972)  Students subsequently conduct a reflexive ethnographic analysis of their own daily experiences  Keep a journal of their daily conversations  Alim () proposes this practice validates the students language preference outside the classroom Students gain a better awareness of their own linguistic speaking patterns and interactions
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  Hiphopography  Students expandtheir ethnographic skills by examining their own "social world“  Important to relay to students that they are "contributing to the body of scholarly literature on their own speech variety"
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  Linguistic Profiling  Goalis to expose students to the nature of power relations in language  Watch a video introducing them to the racial assumptions made in pronouncing “Hello” (Purnell et. al., 1999)  “students are often animated through these explorations of linguistic profiling in their communities and they are motivated to engage in community activism around issues of linguistic discrimination”
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  Conclusion  Critical LanguageAwareness programs in India may be an important way in which we can revise our pedagogies, not only to take the students’ language into account but also to account for the interconnectedness of language with the larger socio-political and socio- historical phenomena that help to maintain unequal power relations in a still-segregated society.
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  References  Monyaki. B.S, Critical Language Awareness for English Today: Languages Department of Basic Education  Ali. Shamim, Critical Language Awareness in Pedagogic Context, (Department of English, National University of Modern Languages H-9, Islamabad, Pakistan)  Fairclough, N. (ed). (1992). Critical Language Awareness. London: Harlow.  Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement: English First Additional Language Grades 10–12