This paper provides a panoramic description of the ways in which the so-called Critical Language Awareness (CLA), can contribute to the teaching and learning of English as a global language, which increasingly involves a wide range of visual, verbal, and digitally-delivered media and modes of communication. The overview presented begins with the concept of Language Awareness, and goes into more depth with respect to that of Critical Language Awareness, establishing a parallel with Paulo Freire´s conception based on the notions of social justice, identity, power and inequality. Finally, the history of the teaching of foreign languages in Chile is presented, and a broader sense of the concept of discourse is outlined, that of multimedia discourse