ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and evaluates a language awareness course which took place in the Modern Languages Department of a Shropshire Secondary school, Madeley Court, during 1987/1988. It provides two tenets of a critical language study approach which are central to enabling all children to develop an explicit understanding of themselves as language users in the society in which they live. First, that a critical approach sets out to explain, not simply describe, the discourse of society. Second, that the child's own linguistic and other experiences are central to the learning process. Language awareness or 'language study' as it can also be called, evolved in the 1960s with the development of Linguistics as a significant discipline and the demise of prescriptive grammar teaching based on an inappropriate Latinate model. In spite of the collaborative approach the Modern Language teachers perceived the advisory teachers as 'experts' in matters to do with the English language.
