NATIONAL CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT POLICY STATEMENT

NATIONAL ORIENTATION WORKSHOPFOR

LANGUAGES

Content, Methodology and AssessmentSession 1.2

Critical Language Awareness

2013

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Language ...

• Communication tool• Expresses diversity and aesthetic values• Constructs cultural and social identity, • Transmits knowledge• Expresses feeling and ideas• Creates images and ideas to enhance

understanding

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Activity 1

Refer to Annexure A (slides 12-19) and FAL p. 30/HL p. 23 of CAPS

• Discuss your understanding of CLA • Prepare and present a practical demonstration of

any link between CLA and CAPS• Consolidation

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In Response-Principles of CLAThree principles that emerge from CLA:• teaching is emancipatory; • teaching is oriented towards the recognition of difference; •an engagement with teaching as an oppositional practice (all participants are continuously thinking towards the prospects for empowerment, particularly of sectors that have been disempowered or excluded in the past)

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In Response-Understanding CLA

Clark and Ivanic (1997:217) state that the aims and scope of CLA seek to: "empower learners by providing them with a critical analytical framework to help them reflect on their own language experiences and practices, the language practices of others in the institutions of which they are a part and in the wider society within which they live."

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In Response-CAPS and CLAAccording to CAPS, CLA should address the

following:• facts and opinions• direct and implied meaning• denotation and connotation• socio-political and cultural background of texts

and author• the effect of selections and omissions on

meaning

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In Response-CAPS and CLA• relationships between language and power• emotive and manipulative language, bias,

prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, language varieties, inferences, assumptions, arguments, purpose of including or excluding information• Interpretation of visual literacy

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Activity 2• Why the emphasis on CLA?• How well is CLA covered by the language skills?

Provide an example.• Select a relevant text from the CAPS Training

Manual that you would use to demonstrate CLA• In what way does CLA develop and enhance

critical thinking?• Feedback

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In Response-Approach to CLA• Looking at the text as a totality• What does the author hope to achieve?• How does s/he achieve that using: language - • choice of words• use of tone• use of pace• use of punctuation

visual cues and clues

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Advantages of CLA • enhances growth in learning• enables learners to apply appropriate

language features across the skills and curriculum

• develops and enhances critical thinking • newspaper articles• advertisements• films

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THANK YOUTHANK YOU

What is?Back to class - Miguel Farias Chileno:• Fairclough (2004): the latest developments in CLA take into account the world's changing configurations. •Even as the shape of new global social order becomes more evident, so does the need for a critical awareness of language "as part of people's resources for living in new ways, in new circumstances". •Among those new circumstances is a broader sense of what constitutes discourse, given that the linguistic code is part of a broad array of multiple codes, including, for example, visual images. • The production, consumption, and comprehension of media in all of its aspects will surely play an increasingly important role in the language learning curriculum.

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Food for thought

Language is a very powerful device for achieving our day-to-day targets. It is a powerful tool for transmitting information, philosophies feelings and emotions. Language and discourse assemble, legalize and organize knowledge, communal relationships and organizations (Luke, 2003). The text whether written or oral is a multidimensional structure and is layered like a “sheet of plywood.”

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Food for thought...contTexts consist of syntax, lexicon, grammar,

morphology, phonology and semantics. However, it is not possible to have sheer knowledge of text on the basis of grammar. Only lexical items, subject verb agreement and tenses do not guide to the comprehension of text. Basically it is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of communication that views language as a form of communal practice and focal point is to study the ways social and political domination are reproduced by written and verbal style.

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Food for thought...contIt is very important to have writers and speakers’

point of view, the historical context and the social background of the text and oral communication.

(Critical Language Awareness in Pedagogic Context Shamim Ali, Department of English, National University of Modern Languages H-9, Islamabad, Pakistan)

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Origin of Critical Language Awarness (CLA)

Miguel Farias Chileno continues:• CLA is a derivative of an earlier movement called ‘language awareness' which developed in England in response to government reports bearing out a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction with English and foreign language education in public schools, (The Kingman and Cox reports, DES 1988, DES 1989).• LA - initially defined by Fairclough (1992) as "conscious attention to properties of language and language use as an element of language education,“

• Thus Donmall (1985) describes language awareness as involving "a person's sensitivity to and conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life".

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Origin of Critical Language Awareness (CLA) Cont…

Miguel Farias Chileno quotes Donmall:

Language awareness, according to Donmall, operates on three distinctive levels:a)The cognitive level, referring to awareness of language patternsb)The affective level, i.e. with regard to forming attitudesc) The social level, which references the improvement of learners' effectiveness as communicators

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What could CLA be?According to Chileno, ‘Consideration of language as critical

practice, involving self-consciousness, and as socially enacted, engaged with others, is what Critical Language Awareness could well be.’

(Critical language awareness in foreign language learning , Miguel Farias Chileno, Universidad de Santiago)

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What is?Back to class - Miguel Farias Chileno:• What is needed for CLA to take root is a change in the beliefs and attitudes to language learning from a decontextualized, explicit grammar oriented approach to an inclusion of the political and social dimension in which the language is used. •As Clark and Ivanic point out, language cannot be separated from the social contexts which shape it:...language forms cannot be considered independently of how they are used to communicate in context. Further, individual acts of communication in context cannot be considered independently of the social forces which have set up the convention of appropriacy for that context.

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