Language Exploration and Awareness: A Resource Book for Teachers - Softcover

This volume shows English language teachers how to enlarge their curriculum beyond the traditional emphases on grammar and syntax. Written from a "language in cultural and social context" perspective, the book clearly demonstrates to language teachers how they can incorporate a variety of language topics -- general semantics, regional and social dialects, syntax, spelling, history of the English language, social language conventions, lexicography, word origins, and the like -- into their classrooms. Clearly written and praised for being so reader-accessible, the book reviews basic aspects of a more comprehensive approach to English language study in classrooms, then demonstrates how teachers can devise student-centered, inquiry-oriented activities for the learners in their classes.

To enable students to examine and explore numerous aspects of language in use, the book provides the philosophical foundation for and the characteristics of an approach to language study -- language exploration and awareness (LEA) -- that includes:
* the study of genuine, authentic language rather than abstract and contrived textbook examples and models;
* an insistence on the premise that language-learning activities in schools be student-centered rather than teacher-centered;
* a requirement that students make observations of authentic language uses, then formulate generalizations based upon those observations;
* a recognition of the fact that "good English" is a rigorously enforced but floating social standard that is attained through varying uses of language, depending upon their diverse contexts of use; and
* a belief in the proposition that as students' language continues to develop, this growth in language helps them grow through language.