ABSTRACT
This research on the development of Critical Language Awareness (CLA) materials for use in South African secondary schools took place from 1989 to 1991, during a turbulent period of South African history. When I began, at the height of the struggle against apartheid, there was little possibility of the materials being allowed into state schools; by 1991 the changes in the country enabled publishers to risk publishing them and teachers to risk trialling them. In 1993, six workbooks, designed to teach students about the relation between language and power, were published as the Critical Language Awareness Series (Janks, 1993a). Each workbook consists of 24 pages of critical literacy activities based on everyday media texts and valuing multiliteracies and linguistic diversity.
