Raising Children’s Awareness of Language in the Period for Integrated Study

The notion of Language Awareness（LA）, which is defined as "explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use" has been applied to the language education in some areas in EU, and it is reported to be effective as a bridge between L1 and L2 learning to some extent in the linguistic context of Europe. This study will introduce a program to put the notion of LA into practice in the Period for Integrated Study in a local elementary school and quantitatively analyze the effectiveness of the program in Japan. If we divide the notion of LA into two categories, meta-linguistic abilities and attitudes toward linguistic diversity, we can conclude that the effects can be expected in a relatively short span of time in the former category but they are limited in the latter