ABSTRACT
This chapter explains language awareness (LA) and provides movement in a social context. It focuses on the theoretical foundations of LA, including cognitive and sociocultural aspects of LA and how individual learners/language users construct their LA. Critical language awareness (CLA), building on and incorporating critical discourse analysis, thus focuses on the relationship between language and power. The chapter addresses issues of research and teaching; LA is discussed from a complexity perspective before the focus shifts to an LA approach in the language classroom. There are links and references to how LA has been implemented and some examples of common tasks and techniques. The chapter shows that despite their very wide range and diverse manifestations, LA approaches have common theoretical and ideological foundations in first language classrooms and in second and foreign language classrooms on critical LA; Eslami-Rasekh on pragmatic LA; Svalberg and Zangoei et al.
