Teaching Collocations in Foreign Language Classes: Why and How

In 1984 Eric Hawkins advocates a new element for foreign language classes that he was missing in the curriculum: language awareness. After him, the chief aim of this new constituent in the curriculum “will be to challenge pupils to ask questions about language, which so many take for granted” (Hawkins, p.4). In other words he describes language awareness as that part of language education that is dealing with the model of language itself. Today the concept of language awareness is still a recent means of investigations. The following definition is widely accepted: “Language Awareness is a person’s sensitivity to and a conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life” (Garrett/James, p.8)

For the sake of more precise further investigations, it is important to differentiate between language awareness that can be acquired by native speakers and that one that can be acquired by foreign language learners.

In the literature on language awareness we find those linguistic scientists claiming a critical approach, mainly emphasize the relationship between language, learning and society (Fairclough, 1992). In their article “Critical Approaches to Language, Learning and Pedagogy” Lesley Lancaster and Rhiannan Taylor support a break with traditionally fixed roles of teachers, students and also obsolete teaching methods whenever those features go against an authentic usage of the language in use (1992: 257 ff). Henry Widdowson, however, opposes this tendency by stating that although teachers need to be aware of sociocultural aspects and of language as it actually occurs, “they should, above all, never forget, that the language is foreign to their pupils” (Widdowson, p.33). Therefore, after him, it is not the authentic use of a language but the authentic learning process that should constitute the first goal of the teacher (1997, 33 ff).

As a foreign language learner lacks the full sociolinguistic context of the language, he learns and also concentrates to a great extend on the learning process itself, it can be deduced that language awareness for a foreign language learner in general is closer connected to language learning awareness than it is to native speakers.