ABSTRACT
This chapter reports some preliminary findings from a research project conducted in Hampshire schools in autumn 1988, in which primary and secondary school teachers with special responsibility for language teaching were interviewed to discover their views on the place of explicit knowledge about language (KAL) in the school language curriculum, and on possible rationales and strategies for developing such knowledge. On the other hand, the Language Awareness movement in British schools has in the 1980s been promoting the development of children's explicit language knowledge on other, broader grounds, and asserts its value regardless of any direct impact on language skills. Clearly, such knowledge as they did have owed little to their original degree and teacher training courses, where the component of language knowledge was generally deemed very slight. The general background was a literature-based university degree in a modern language, followed by a PGCE where the main emphasis was on teaching methodology.
