A Tentative Research On Language Awareness Of Chinese High School EFL Teachers

In the nineteen eighties, language awareness movement was concerned about language itself. The attention of the movement was language forms, with the assumption that proficient and accurate mastery of knowledge about language plays a crucial role in language learning. Language awareness asks learners not only to learn language, but also to learn knowledge about language, or explicit knowledge. When the subject of awareness switches to teachers from learners, teacher language awareness (TLA) comes forth. TLA consists of subject-matter knowledge, communicative language ability and pedagogical content knowledge, which are combined to facilitate effective language teaching. TLA contributing to effective teaching lies in its filter of materials, language peer’s output and teacher talk, which make language input for learners optimal. TLA helps qualified teachers realize three roles they should act-that is, language users, language analysts and language teachers. All accelerates teacher professional development.This study borrows a language awareness test from Pro. Andrew as the investigation instrument, to measure the subject-matter level (relating to grammar) of the senior high school teachers from Jiangsu Province attending the college entrance examination marking work of 2014 and the teachers from Jiangsu Rudong Senior High School (total number is 91). The results reveal many problems and implications: 1. Generally speaking, the respondents are less qualified in metalanguage of grammar since the average of 64.17 is below the pass line of 64.2. The pass rate is only 43.62%. But considering the subjects are relatively excellent among the teacher community, the poor achievement is far from satisfaction. From the performance in each section, teachers have a picture of metalanguage because the pass rate of identification of metalanguage is 80.85%, while it is intractable for them to apply metalanguage to deal with grammar issues because the pass rate of application of metalanguage is only 21.28%.2. The test mainly focuses on the explicit metalanguage relating to grammar, the results of which only mean that the respondent teachers have difficulty in putting language awareness (grammar) into terminology in English. However, these teachers can expound the forms and functions of a certain grammatical knowledge together with students’level in the interview, which indicates they are equipped with language awareness (grammar), only at the implicit level.3. Teacher education for the in-service centers on pedagogics or learning theories, disregarding basic knowledge about language, let alone language awareness. Training sessions for in-service teachers should embrace programs designed to raise teachers’language awareness. In addition, language teachers desiderate a language awareness assessment system to help them become aware what they are and where to go.4. Linguistic learning in pre-service teacher education contributes to the present systematic language structures. Cultivation of teachers in the future will be beneficial from enhancing development of language awareness in normal students of English major.