Teacher language awareness and communication strategies in Syiah Kuala University, Aceh, Indonesia

Abstract

There have been many ways of improving the quality of verbal classroom discourse in English Language Teaching especially in dealing with constraints of language proficiency, which always haunt Non-Native English Speaker Teachers (NNESTs) who have undergone diverse obstacles and challenges in achieving native-like proficiency. In fact, these teachers are found to have strengthened teacher language knowledge or so-called language awareness because they have been trained during their long-term formal and professional teacher educations. Unfortunately, this knowledge has not been optimised to bring a sort of awareness upon teachers in language use; it can function two-fold: providing quality verbal instructions and showcasing language systems. This study sought to explore the synthesis between teacher language awareness and communication strategies in handling breakdowns or interruptions in classroom teacher-learner interactions. The synthesis is analysed to explicate the potency of teacher language awareness in providing teacher assistance on the grounds that the more aware a teacher of own language use, the more responsive a teacher of scaffolding learners within interactions via communication strategies. The sociocultural theoretical framework is employed due to the distinctiveness of each teacher’s historical language development to explain teachers’ language awareness and communication strategies in classroom teaching.