ABSTRACT
A primary aim of the Language In the National Curriculum (LINC) Project is to enhance teachers’ understanding and knowledge about language in relation to processes of teaching and learning. Language is central to the processes of teaching and learning. Explicit knowledge about language can sharpen teachers’ appreciation of children’s achivements with language as well as broaden the language opportunities they provide for pupils in the classroom. Pupils’ knowledge about language should take place within the context of reading, writing and speaking/listening development. LINC stresses above all the richness and variety of language: the uses and functions of language over the forms of language; the description of texts in social contexts over the description of isolated decontextualised bits of language. A functional theory of language is predicated on the fact that language varies. It should be a universal educational goal to empower pupils to use as wide a range of language varieties as competently as possible.
