Language awareness in Belgium: More of an implicit fact than a clear curriculum item

Abstract

An outline is given of how mother tongue and foreign languages are taught in Belgium, especially Flemish, secondary schools. A brief comment is then made about the consequences for awareness of languages of the multilingual situation in Belgium. Then, at some length, a number of activities ‘out of school’ but felt to have a significant effect on the pupils’ awareness of languages, are reported. The second half of the article discusses how far topics and sub‐themes of language awareness are actually and explicitly present in Belgian mother tongue and foreign language teaching practice and more specifically in the curricula, the official guidelines.