Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

170 KAL AND THE GOOD LANGUAGE TEACHERparticular line here [the sentence beginning If you treat your pets badly...] the smarterones would think ‘OK, there’s something wrong here’ ... So they can come and see me’.Unfortunately, the data provided no evidence of either learner confusion or of learnerinitiatives to resolve such confusion by consulting the teacher.In relation to both Anna and Bonnie, it should be emphasised that the allegedlimitations in each of the lesson extracts above relate specifically to teacher languageawareness and the mediation of input for learning. In each case, those limitations couldbe considered as relatively minor, and there is no intended criticism of the pedagogicalstrategies themselves. It is interesting to note that such limitations in teacher languageawareness as were evident in the pedagogical practice of both these teachers weremainly vocabulary-related rather than grammar-related. This is perhaps hardly surprisinggiven that on the Language Awareness test both teachers performed less well on thevocabulary component than the grammar component, and that when interviewed bothrevealed a lack of confidence about vocabulary. Anna, for instance, said twice during thefirst interview ‘I myself am not very good at vocabulary’ and blamed herself for thelimitations of her students’ vocabulary knowledge: ‘I may not have given them a goodmodel to stimulate them to know enough. So I still think that they have not enough[vocabulary knowledge] because of me to a certain extent’.THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TEACHER LANGUAGE AWARENESS OF‘GOOD LANGUAGE TEACHERS’The third question sought to identify the characteristics of the teacher languageawareness exhibited by these ‘Good Language Teachers’. The discussion of thisquestion draws on all the data: the tests, interviews, and lesson observations.The first, and perhaps most striking characteristic of the teacher language awarenessof all three subjects is their willingness to engage with language, i.e with the content oflearning. In Andrews (2001) it is argued that teacher engagement with content-relatedissues in the classroom is a significant variable influencing the application of teacherlanguage awareness in practice (Andrews 2001:83-88). The interviews with all threesubjects show how central the content of learning is both to their thinking aboutlanguage pedagogy and to their classroom practice. Each ‘Good Language Teacher’engages with content in her own individual way, but for all of them content issues formthe core of their thinking, planning and teaching. Trudi’s approach to engagement isoffered as an illustration.Trudi characterises herself as a teacher who tries to be both communicative ineverything she is doing and ‘very well structured at the same time’. She claims that heroverall approach to L2 pedagogy is based upon her own school experiences as a learnerof Latin and a student of her L1, German, together with her subsequent studies oflinguistics, language acquisition, and humanistic psychology. She sees her knowledge oflinguistics and psychology as going hand in hand, with the latter helping her tounderstand how best to draw on her linguistic knowledge to assist learners. With the