CLA presents the view that language use is not neutral, but is always part of a wider social struggle underlining the importance for learners of exploring the ways in which language can both conceal and reveal the social and ideological nature of all texts. In general, language awareness is characterized by a more holistic and text-based approach to language, of which a natural extension is work in critical language awareness, or CLA. More recently, the approach has evolved alongside advances in language description which deal with larger stretches of discourse, including literary discourse, and which go beyond the single sentence or the individual speaking turn as the basic unit. However, the language awareness movement also developed a parallel impetus in reaction to the relative neglect of attention to forms of language within some versions of communicative language teaching methodologies. ¡ The approach was, however, associated in the 1980s with a reaction to those more prescriptive approaches to language learning which were generally typified by atomistic analysis of language, and reinforced by narrowly formalistic methodologies, such as grammar translation, drills, and pattern practice. van Essen (1997) points to a long tradition in several European countries see also the journal Language Awareness 1990, 1/1. The concept of language awareness is not new. The approach has been developed in contexts of both second and foreign language learning, and in mother-tongue language education, where the term 'knowledge about language' has sometimes been preferred. Language awareness refers to the development in learners of an enhanced consciousness of and sensitivity to the forms and functions of language.
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