Language awareness is one of the main plural approaches to language teaching and learning, recommended in Europe (A Framework of Reference for pluralistic Approaches – FREPA, European Centre of Modern Languages).

The teaching-learning activities concern all the languages present in the class (those included in the teaching curriculum and those that the school does not have the ambition to teach). It is based on a global and comparative approach between the various languages: the language of instruction, the students' mother tongues, curricular foreign languages, other languages present in the wider community, languages and forms of communication.

The school cannot officially include all the languages of the pupils’ language repertoires in the school curriculum. The educational project of the school can, however, mobilize (even if partially), regulate and extend the existing repertoires, in order to recognise the social, cognitive, emotional and identity (as well as economic) value of the whole linguistic repertoire and biography of the child. A key role is played by the first language(s) of the child, of his/her family and community.