Integrating language awareness with critical language skills: a legal English experience

Abstract

This paper is about developing first-year law students' reading skills. It argues that this could be achieved through an approach that integrates the teaching of vocabulary and grammar with the teaching of critical language awareness. The teaching of vocabulary and grammar is (in this study) done by analysing lexical and syntactic features of legal English texts, and the teaching of critical language skills by making plain the ideology and power relations contained in legal discourse. Two classes of first-year law students are used as subjects and the content is English for Specific Purposes, which is linked to the study of law. A proficiency and a competency test as well as a short questionnaire are used to measure the efficacy of the input. The results indicate how using the integrated approach in question can facilitate not only second-language learners' acquisition of linguistic competence in English but also their critical literacy.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2006, 24(1): 23–33