Language Awareness and Minority Languages

Abstract

Providing an overview of ideas about as well as practices aiming at the promotion of minority languages at school through fostering pupils' language awareness, this chapter starts with a sketch of some early developments in the scholarly interest in language awareness related to minority languages. It then deals with some major contributions regarding the role of language awareness in the pro-motion of minority languages at school in Europe during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The following section tackles a number of issues that color contemporary reflections on language awareness as part of plurilingual education. After a brief discussion of some of the major difficulties and challenges surround-ing the interplay between language awareness and minority languages, attention is given to some possible future directions in research on this topic. Throughout this chapter, the focus is almost exclusively on Europe since that is the context the author is most familiar with.