A cross‐linguistic approach to language awareness

Although mother tongue (MT) and foreign language (FL) teaching and learning have much in common, there is little evidence that teachers exploit the relationship in any systematic way. This paper revives Eric Hawkins’ idea of a language studies trivium where Language Awareness activities should fill the ‘space between’ the learner's two languages. A distinction is drawn between awareness and consciousness of language, and cross‐linguistic relationships are suggested to be a major, yet unexploited source of input salience strengthening, evidence being adduced from natural bilinguals’ metalinguistic activities. Suggestions for the classroom are outlined.