'It is a broad, broad concept and extremely interesting.' : CLIL teachers and class teachers' beliefs about language awareness

The world is increasingly multilingual and so countries need to develop new ways to meet the needs of multilingual citizens. One way to develop schools to take multilingualism more into account is by implementing language-aware classroom practices. Finland mentions language awareness in their National Curriculum for Basic Education. Since curriculum changes take time to turn into action, it is worthwhile to investigate how teachers see language awareness, both in theory and in their classrooms. The aim of this study was to investigate how CLIL teachers and class teachers define language awareness, how it is a part of their teaching, what they think their role is in furthering language awareness and if there are any similarities or differences between the teachers. The study was done by conducting four interviews, two with elementary school English CLIL teachers and two with elementary school class teachers. Thematic analysis was done on the transcribed interview data to find common themes. Overall the results indicated that the teachers had a broad understanding of the term language awareness. They related the term to both foreign languages and the language of instruction as well as subject-specific language. The teachers mainly defined language awareness as recognizing, accepting and considering languages. Language awareness was also seen in their classrooms, by for example showcasing the students’ language skills and using language creatively. Some teachers said their role in language awareness is to enrich students with languages while only the CLIL teachers said their role is to be a model of language use. The teachers approached language awareness from different points of views: the CLIL teachers from the point of view of foreign languages and the class teachers from the language of instruction and subject-specific language. However, there were also some overlapping views between the teachers, such as language awareness being related to multilingualism. The results indicate that the participating teachers ...