On language awareness, critical language awareness and language teaching
The article is an overview of selected works by Polish and English authors dealing with language awareness. The present author decided to tackle the subject after the concept was introduced into the new curriculum in 2009, with “Language awareness” becoming one of its main elements. In the English language world, language awareness has been functioning on a larger scale since the 1980s, also as the thriving Association of Language Awareness, which has at its disposal a serious scholarly journal, Language Awareness. The present author also examines a notion known critical language awareness. Its advocates explore the relation between language and ideology, politics and power, and call for the notion as well as related problems to be introduced into the teaching of Polish. After discussing the content of the new curriculum related to language awareness, the author concludes that it is conservative, corresponding to a large extent to the content of the old curriculum, in particular to elements of the traditional descriptive grammar of the Polish language.