Language awareness raising in Flemish primary schools. An implementation study.

In 2011 a review study, commissioned by 'VLOR' (Flemish council of education) was carried out by the Centre for Language and Education (CLE, KU Leuven) and 'Steunpunt Diversiteit en Leren' (SDL, UGent), in association with the research unit Language and Education (KU Leuven) and the network of expertise School of Education Association KU Leuven. The study reports on the concept, the use and the effects of language awareness raising in Flemish primary and secondary education. It concludes that a well-thought implementation project can provide all those involved (policy-makers, educational counselors , schools and teachers) with the necessary information and instruments to understand the importance of language awareness raising as well as to put language awareness raising in practice. In order to initiate this implementation project, a short-term study is carried out (by CLE, SDL and the Flemish educational support-services), aiming at the following goals: (1) support the pedagogical support-services and involve them in a language awareness raising project in a number of primary schools; (2) inventory of existing materials and development of new prototypical materials; pass on these materials to 'Klascement' for integration in their language-website; (3) transfer of expertise and experiences to the support-services allowing them to proceed independently with supporting language awareness raising projects in primary school. The complementary expertise of all partners will be deployed in order to guarantee maximum effectiveness.

Keywords:Dissemination, Materials development, Language awareness raising, Action-based research

Disciplines:Theory and methodology of literary studies