Language Awareness and Second Language Acquisition: Is there a link?

Abstract

The conceptual analysis of language awareness has been extensively investigated with varying connotations. The first objective of this research study is to investigate the extent of the interaction between the development of language awareness and second language acquisition. As a second objective, this study hypothesizes that the conceptual definition of language awareness, in terms of being a linguistic terminology, needed further clarification, and this could be explored through categorizing data that are derived from selected published articles into common themes. Process mapping research methodology iseffectively used in this linguistic study. The articles that are thematically explored within this research study are selected based on the fact that they used language awareness as a separate linguistic conceptual entity within the scope of their research. The results of this study suggest that a process modeling technique can be used to associate collected data within categories in order to show the common themes of language awareness. Even though the overall data were partly inconclusive due to lack of consistency in the terminological use of the term “language awareness,” this research study suggests categorical relationships in a conceptual process model and shows that language awareness has a positive impact on the language acquisition process.