ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a differently oriented relationship and its central claim is that aspects of macro-human development influence the 'awareness' that learners have of language, independently of conscious reflection on language. It demonstrates how different aspects of Language Awareness can account for different dimensions of second language development and how Language Awareness can be used to differentiate between second language developments in different age groups. All second language development is united by the awareness of the lexico-grammatical level of language organisation. However, younger and older second language development are distinguished by the additional presence in older learners of pragma-linguistic awareness, the awareness of (i) how language form is related to the projection of social identity and (ii) how discourse and contextual factors can relate to morpho-syntactic features. The chapter also demonstrates how pedagogic initiatives need to take account of learner factors, even though their inspiration does not need to come from studies of language development.
