‘Not Knowing is Hence, Not Loving’ The Significance of Raising Language Awareness Amongst Teachers of Content Area Learning

Abstract

Listening to or speaking another language that we do
not know or rarely use can be a daunting or even a frustrating
experience in communication. Similarly, for language not to be
addressed in content area, teaching and learning may hence do a
disservice to students especially ones that find learning in another
language challenging. Thus ‘Not knowing is hence not loving’, a
literal translation from a well-known Malay saying “Tak kenal
maka tak cinta” is deliberately chosen as a title for this paper to
encapsulate that simple connection between knowing and loving
i.e. to know is to love in relation to this issue. This paper believes
in the importance of consistently taking initiatives of wanting to
know and finding out about language issues that surrounds
teaching and learning as comprehensively as possible for
teaching to be more inclusive of addressing one of many possible
learning problems i.e. language barriers. It draws on discussions
of the phenomenon of a second or foreign language as a medium
of instruction especially in relation to English language in Brunei.
The paper recommends for language integration to feature in
content area teaching and learning to better address languagerelated
problems and to promote that 'love' which is enhanced
learning of content.