The assumption underlying this book is that teachers of English not only need to be able to speak and understand the language they are teaching; they also need to know a good deal about the way the language works: its components, its regularities, and the way it is used. It is further assumed that this kind of knowledge can usefully be gained through the investigation – or analysis – of samples of the language itself. Accordingly, the core of the book consists of sequences of tasks, the purpose of which is to raise the user’s understanding of how language works, that is, to promote language awareness.

What is language awareness?

Acquiring your mother tongue is an unconscious process, like learning to walk, and leaves no trace in memory. Likewise, using the language thus acquired involves little or no conscious attention to its formal properties. ‘Language is like the air we breathe. We cannot do without it, but we do not often consciously pay attention to it’ (Van Lier 1995). It is not surprising, then, that we have a hard time trying to describe what it is that we intuitively ‘know’ about the language that we speak. Even such basic concepts as noun, verb and preposition, let alone phoneme or clause, are not self-evident. It usually requires someone with the relevant expertise to point these elements out to us – to make them explicit. This is what language awareness is: explicit knowledge about language.

This should not be confused with the ability to speak and write the language, i.e. language proficiency. The one does not assume the other: as was pointed out, language proficiency – especially for native speakers – is largely implicit and intuitive, whereas language awareness, by definition, is conscious and can be articulated. Put another way: one is acquired, while the other is learned – although, as Andrews (2007) points out, in language classes where the target language is also the medium of instruction, it is often difficult to disentangle the two: ‘Once teachers are in the classroom, anything they say about grammar during the lesson not only will draw on their subject-matter knowledge, but will also be mediated through their language proficiency’. In an ideal world, the language teacher will be both language proficient and language aware.