Teacher language awareness and scaffolded interaction in CLIL science classrooms

Teacher language awareness (TLA) constitutes the teacher’s self-reflective knowledge about the operation of language systems in pedagogical practices. This study focuses on teachers’ understanding of learning of language and learning through language in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts, exploring how teachers proceduralise their knowledge of language to facilitate science learning in Hong Kong. By analysing the reflective relationship between TLA and scaffolding strategies of two teachers (students n = 31; 32) during a set of lessons in a secondary school, this paper suggests that it is critical to re-orient the TLA focus from teachers to the act of learning and learners’ needs. This expanded conceptual framework of TLA sheds light on how to transform teachers’ implicit knowledge of language into explicit awareness of scaffolding in class. The TLA-filtered, scaffolded interactions can therefore promote the use of language not merely for pedagogical purposes but also as a cognitive learning tool.