Education towards language awareness in ireland¹

The terms Ireland and Irish, applied to the educational arrangements and trends described in this paper, refer to the Republic of Ireland, in the sense of the twenty‐six counties of Ireland which are governed from Dublin. No reference is made in this paper to the situation in Northern Ireland. The language labelled Irish here is the Celtic language otherwise known as Irish Gaelic.

²

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Vera Regan of the Department of French, UCD, for supplying me with information about linguistics teaching at UCD, and to Joe Sheils of ITE for providing information about the ITÉ Autonomous Language Learning Project. I also wish to thank David Little for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, a shorter version of which was first presented at the European Symposium on Language Awareness held at the Goetheinstitut, London, October 1991.

Abstract

This paper examines the prospects for the establishment of an interdisciplinary language awareness programme at school level in the Republic of Ireland in the light of the extent to which language awareness is ‘in the air’ in Ireland, of references to language awareness in official educational reports and syllabuses, of general cross‐disciplinary collaboration in the languages area, of the presence of linguistics in courses figuring in the initial and in‐service formation. of language teachers, and of Irish‐based research support for the pleading of the language awareness cause.

Notes

The terms Ireland and Irish, applied to the educational arrangements and trends described in this paper, refer to the Republic of Ireland, in the sense of the twenty‐six counties of Ireland which are governed from Dublin. No reference is made in this paper to the situation in Northern Ireland. The language labelled Irish here is the Celtic language otherwise known as Irish Gaelic.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Vera Regan of the Department of French, UCD, for supplying me with information about linguistics teaching at UCD, and to Joe Sheils of ITE for providing information about the ITÉ Autonomous Language Learning Project. I also wish to thank David Little for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, a shorter version of which was first presented at the European Symposium on Language Awareness held at the Goetheinstitut, London, October 1991.