Language Awareness and Intercultural Communicative Competence: Revisiting the Relationship

The phenomenon of language awareness has attracted the attention of teachers and researchers working in language and intercultural education for several decades now, albeit with variation in terminology and differences in theoretical perspectives. Within Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory, framings of language awareness typically emphasize learners’ explicit knowledge of linguistic forms and functions, but only rarely take into account the relationship between language and culture or the need for the learner to reflect on this relationship in the process of learning. Meanwhile, early proponents of the language awareness movement in foreign language education saw their mission as much more than