Language Awareness Continuum: A case of requiring specialised linguistic understandings in an education context

This paper outlines the need for an additional technology to make elements of (socio-) linguistics visible and accessible to the more generalised field of education. It exemplifies this by describing the educational climate in Queensland in the early 2000s (in relation to Indigenous learners of English as a Second/Subsequent Language or Dialect, ESL/D), where: an appropriate assessment tool had been developed for Indigenous ESL learners (ESL Bandscales); an authorising policy environment existed for their identification and monitoring (through Partners for Success); and, indeed, a commonwealth-funded program provided a possible financial incentive at a school level (English as a Second Language – Indigenous Language Speaking Students, ESL-ILSS). Despite the alignment of such support, there has been little advancement towards systemic recognition and support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ESL/D learners. This paper argues that this is partly attributable to the lack of sufficient understandings about language and language varieties, specifically contact languages. Thus, the Language Awareness Continuum (Author, 2006) was developed as a technology to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ESL/D learners by both describing and developing (socio-) linguistic understandings necessary for students, educators and the system.