Rod Bolitho

Towards Awareness of English as a Professional Language.

Much recent work on language awareness in teacher‐training programmes has focused quite rightly on teachers’ knowledge about the language they are teaching. The authors’ work (1993, 1994 and 1995) has, by and large, dwelt on the development of methodological approaches to awareness‐raising about language on teachers’ programmes. This paper discusses the potential extension of awareness‐raising techniques to the wider concerns of English as a professional language for teachers. The Appendix to the paper also reports on the issues raised in a workshop which explored the nature and scope of English as a professional language held at the Dublin Conference for Language Awareness (July 1996).

Language Awareness in in-Service Programmes

Language awareness (LA) (see James & Garrett (1991) for definitions of the scope and fields of LA) is an integral part of any in-service (INSET) programme for language teachers concerned with continuing professional development. Just as professional development may be seen as a career-long process (Lange, 1990; Hargreaves & Fullan, 1992) it can be argued that no teacher of any language should ever stop learning about their subject. In addition, the processes involved in LA work are entirely consistent with the best traditions of experiential learning (Kohonen, 1992), or learning from practice (Schon, 1983,1987). Here, we describe and trace the connections between LA and experiential learning, and examine some of the potential benefits to teachers of LA work in INSET. Finally we suggest some ways in which LA work can be usefully incorporated into INSET programmes.