The article presents an interim operationalization on language awareness in the context of plurilingual education developed in the PE-LAL project’s initial phases. The operationalization consists of two models. The first model conceptualizes plurilingual education based on the Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures and further develops this framework by concretizing how students’ first languages can be taken into account in the three pluralistic approaches to languages. The second model conceptualizes language awareness distinguishing between three dimensions of language awareness that can be directed towards nine language levels and one transversal language learning dimension. The operationalization is a result of the project’s abductive approach: initially, it is developed deductively on the basis of previous research and conceptualizations and then further adapted inductively on the basis of empirical findings from a curriculum analysis. In the next phases of the project, the operationalization will be further developed based on empirical findings from a classroom case study.