The Art of Imitation : A Pedagogy for Developing Language Awareness

• Main Author: Giang, Leon
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap 2017
• Subjects: Learning; Lärande
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-58740

Although imitation pedagogy is not specified in the subject syllabus in GY 11, English teachers in upper-secondary school can apply this pedagogy in their teaching to enhance students’ language awareness. The subject syllabus specifies that teaching should help students develop language awareness. Imitation pedagogy that involves scaffolding a model can give students the opportunity to develop their language awareness, which in turn can enhance their production and reception skills. In addition, teaching students how to imitate a model work, using scaffolding as a strategy, allows them to practice deep analysis and to study how language works in different contexts and for different purposes. Imitation pedagogy that involves scaffolding a speech not only gives students the opportunity to pay attention to form, such as morphology and syntax, while maintaining emphasis on meaning, but also to notice the gap between the model work and their own compositions, which is beneficial for developing students’ reception and writing skills.Through the analysis of a model work combined with their writing practice, students learn about how language can create meaning, emphasis, rhythm, clarity, coherency and power. In addition, power is produced through language; therefore, equipping students with the capacity to understand how compositions written in English can be used for a range of different functions and purposes and how to adapt their own compositions to rhetorical context enables them to work towards participatory democracy. Furthermore, this essay will show how imitation pedagogy could enhance students’ language awareness by analyzing passages from the speech “A More Perfect Union” by Barack Obama. This essay will also demonstrate how this pedagogy could be applied in the English classroom for upper-secondary school through a lesson plan.