Language Awareness of Teacher Trainees

Abstract

Knowledge of language is the basis of every teacher’s daily work. After completing their training, teacher trainees will utilize their knowledge of language as both the basis and the setting for their future educational decisions regarding reading, writing, and language communication. Insights into the importance of language in teaching indicate that teaching language knowledge should occupy a prominent position in teacher-training programs. Accordingly, courses in applied linguistics have been added to courses on academic writing and constitute an essential part of teacher-training programs throughout the world. However, despite the acknowledged importance of language classes in teacher training, there is little systematic research into the changes that occur in teacher trainees’ language knowledge following completion of these courses in applied linguistics. This study investigates the change in teachers’ phonological and morphological awareness in Hebrew following their participation in a course entitled Language Sound and Form. In a test conducted at the beginning and end of each year, teacher trainees were asked to choose the correct morpho-phonemic structure out of two or three options. The words were inserted into sentences consisting of pseudo-words and real words. Significant improvements were found between students’ skills at the beginning of the academic year and its end, indicating that participation in the course apparently helped augment teacher trainees’ linguistic knowledge. Furthermore, this improvement was shown to enable the application of this knowledge to new forms. These findings form the basis of a discussion about the importance of linguistic knowledge in teachers’ training.