Metalinguistic Awareness

With the rise of bilingual and multilingual approaches to teaching a second/foreign language, an overwhelming majority of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have emphasized the important role of the use of mother tongue (L1) in a second language (L2) class and have argued that the use of L2 positively contributes to the cognitive development of students. However, what aspect of L1 should be used in an L2 class have not been specified explicitly. This study set out to investigate the extent to which teachers believe in the efficacy of the use of L1 metalanguage and the extent to which they use it in their classes in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context of Qatar. The second aim was to assess students' beliefs regarding the extent to which the use of L1 metalanguage in an L2 class facilitated their learning process. Most importantly, the study aimed to investigate whether there was a discrepancy between students' expectations and teachers' agendas regarding the use of L1 metalanguage in L2 classrooms. The hypothesis that underpinned this study was that the use of L1 metalanguage to explain structural concepts in L2 contributed to crosslinguistic and metalinguistic awareness. The study adopted a qualitative approach; two questionnaires were developed, one for students and one for teachers. The questionnaire consisted of 5-point Likert scale statements and questions. Twenty-six undergraduate students and eight teachers participated in the study. The students' proficiency level in English was elementary. The teachers were recruited on the basis of their native Arabic language proficiency. The findings suggested that both teachers and students viewed the use of Arabic in their English classes positively, and that no substantial discrepancy was observed between the students and the teachers over the issue of the use of Arabic in class. A minor discrepancy was that whereas the teachers were inclined to use Arabic slightly more for the teaching of grammar than the teaching of vocabulary, the students believed that the use of Arabic for learning vocabulary was more beneficial to their learning than it was for learning grammar.

The present study was carried out at five college-level institutions in the province of Quebec (Canada). Think-aloud protocols (TAPs) were used to investigate positive lexical transfer from English (L2) to German (L3) by Quebec Francophones (n = 66) after ve weeks of formal L3 instruction. The participants were asked to think aloud while translating unknown words in German (L3) that were presented in oral and written form into French (L1). Positive transfer was operationalized by correct translations that participants explicitly or implicitly related to an English cognate. Out of the in uential factors under investigation, metalinguistic awareness was shown to be the strongest predictor of positive transfer , followed by L2 pro ciency. Moreover, a ne-grained analysis of the TAPs revealed inter-and intra-individual variability in the conscious activation of related L2 vocabulary and the use of metalinguistic resources. Our observations point to the invaluable contribution of introspective data to complement ndings based on language-inherent characteristics of crosslinguistic in uence. They highlight individual strategies related to learner and context variables, in line with a dynamic view of multilingualism.

The paper aims to analyze the culiolian background of Minisemantica (henceforth, MS). It is one of the most important theoretical work of Tullio De Mauro. As we will show, MS adopted two distinct but related concepts of the metalinguistic culiolian repertoire: a) the concept of «epilinguistic activity»; b) the concept of «enunciative space». The paper is divided into three parts. The first one is devoted to analyze the general architecture of MS. The second part is about the culiolian concepts. Finally, the third one seeks to identify some significant traces of the culiolian linguistics in more recent De Mauro’s works.

Resumen:
Una gramática pedagógica ha de recoger los conocimientos gramaticales relevantes para la educación lingüística y ha de mostrar cómo estos conocimientos permiten reflexionar sobre la lengua y utilizarla de forma más consciente en sus distintos usos sociales. En parte, estos conoci-mientos hacen referencia a las nociones de la tradición gramatical, pero consideradas desde una perspectiva funcional, es decir, en relación con el papel que tienen en el discurso. Por ello, no se trata solo de saber cómo es una forma lingüística, sino también para qué sirve y cómo se utiliza adecuadamente en distintas actividades discursivas. Esta reflexión ha de vincularse, además, a actividades de aprendizaje que muestren la relación de la reflexión gramatical con el dominio de prácticas discursivas. En este trabajo, tomaremos como ejemplo la noción de adjetivo. Examina-remos los conocimientos teóricos disponibles sobre esta noción y exploraremos cómo se usa en la enseñanza de la lengua, fundamentalmente en Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, y para ello tomaremos como referencia algunos de los libros de texto de enseñanza del castellano de mayor circulación en el ámbito estatal. Finalmente, mostraremos algunas vías alternativas de trabajo gramatical en el aula, relacionadas con el aprendizaje del uso.
Palabras clave: gramática pedagógica, adjetivo, uso reflexivo de la lengua, reflexión metalingüística.

Abstract: A pedagogical grammar needs to include the relevant grammatical knowledge for linguistic education, and it needs to show how this knowledge allow us to reflect upon the language being learned and use it more consciously in different social uses. In part, this knowledge refers to the traditional grammatical notions, but from a functional perspective; that is, in relation to
the role they play in discourse. However, a pedagogical grammar is not only about linguistic forms, but also about what they are for and how they are used appropriately in discursive activities. In addition, language forms and use must also be related to learning activities that show the links between grammatical reflection and the mastering of discursive practices. In this article, we take as an example the notion of adjective, and we examine the theoretical knowledge available about this notion and explore how it is used in language teaching, mainly in secondary education. In order to do this, we take as a reference some of the most regularly used textbooks for the tea ching of Spanish in Spain. Finally, we show some alternative ways to carry out grammatical work in the classroom with links to the learning of adjective use.
Key words: pedagogical grammar, adjective, reflexive use of language, metalinguistic awareness.

– The aim of this study was to assess students' reaction to a communicative activity, in which a group activity is carried out in a very different manner from the traditional group work activities, especially in terms of classroom management and seating plan. This study follows a qualitative method research design, which elicited students' feedback on the activity through open-ended written self-reports. The results suggested that students regarded the activity as very beneficial to their language development and stated preference for this particular activity over traditional pair-work (PW) and group-work (GW) activities. This paper will discuss, in some detail, the extent to which PW and GW activities in a communicative class contribute to second language development, especially as far as accuracy is concerned. The article will challenge the claim that communicative interaction can drive language acquisition forward, and it will question the assumption that communicative activities push students to negotiate for meaning. The article will also suggest an alternative PW and GW activity, which is more conducive to learning, especially in terms of formal properties of language.

Abstrakto: Sa pambihirang panayam na ito, matutunghayan ang mga mahahalagang karunungan patungkol sa Pamimilosopiyang Filipino, hindi nakapagtataka, na ang Pilosopong inilahad ay isa sa mga natatanging dalub-guro at pantas pagdating Kultura, Wika, katutubong kaispan at Pilosopiya sa Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas. Ang mga hindi matatawarang obra at mga nailathalang pilosopikal na gawain ang magpapatunay sa pagkadakila ni Florentino T. Timbreza. Ang kanyang mga konkretong ambag katulad ng artikulasyon at intelktwalisasyon ng Pilosopiyang Filipino ang bibigyang pansin sa papel na ito, sa ganang huli ng panayam, matutunghayan din ang kanyang mabunga at pagkakasunod-sunod na lagombuhay.

Last two decades of research in second language acquisition have shown that for a language learner, their previous language knowledge as well as the learning experience itself can affect the process of subsequent language acquisition. The qualitative and quantitative differences between the acquisition of second (L2), third (L3) and subsequent languages (Ln) make evident the need for a new theoretical framework that would take into account this distinction. The present work offers a review of research carried out in the field of third language acquisition (TLA), both historically and from the point of view of different theoretical approaches. It also reviews the distinction between monolingual, bilingual and multilingual speakers, introducing
the idea of a multicompetent language learner/speaker.
Keywords: TLA, metalinguistic awareness, multilingual speaker, multicompetence

This exploratory study examines an online pronunciation course designed to (a) help university students develop metalinguistic knowledge about pronunciation, (b) gain familiarity with cognitive and metacognitive strategies (c) develop self- monitoring skills, and (d) develop phonological competency individually and at their own pace. One -hundred and ten low intermediate, first-year university students in a required listening course completed eight post-module questionnaires and provided feedback on six areas using a 5-point Likert scale. Two additional questionnaires administered at the end of the semester asked students about their perceived improvement, performance, helpfulness of the assignments, and other aspects of the class in general. All questionnaires allowed for open comments. Means and standard deviations were calculated and used to rank the modules according to the six areas examined and comments were translated, coded, and tabulated. The results showed students desired more guidance with segmentals and preferred Japanese instructions. Open comments  suggested  the  course provided a satisfactory environment for achieving the five goals above, but improvements could be made by including more multimedia, more freedom, and more voices.

This thesis reports a real and apparent time Variationist study of a change in progress in the second person singular (2sg) system in Chilean Spanish. In this variety, speakers manage two 2sg familiar pronominal and verbal paradigms: tu and corresponding tuteo verb forms as in (1), and vos with corresponding voseo verb forms (2), although both occur most frequently with a 0 pronoun (3). The two familiar paradigms can also mix, as seen in (4).
(1) Tu tienes ahorros. You -TU have-TUTEO savings.
(2) o sea vos no tenis ningun concierto. In other words you-VOS have-VOSEO no concert.
(3) ..cuando tengas la posibilidad de conocer, When you-0 have-TUTEO the chance to see,
tenis que ir. You-0 have-VOSEO to go.
(4) ... Pero tu tenis que trabajar po. But you-TU have-VOSEO to work. (From CCSS)
Traditionally described as stigmatised and restricted to lower socio-economic groups (e.g. Alonso and Lida, 1940: 54), since the 1960s voseo verb forms (often disguised by a tu or 0 pronoun) have expanded to the speech of all social classes (e.g. Morales Pettorino, 1972). Indeed, Torrejon (1986: 682) hypothesised that they might one day replace tuteo as the universal standard form of address for educated Chileans in informal situations with familiar interlocutors. Although there has been some recent Variationist work (e.g. Bishop and Michnowicz, 2010, Rivadeneira Valenzuela, 2016, Fernandez-Mallat, 2018), there is still much to be learned about the real usage of voseo in spontaneous conversation.
Analysing approximately 3200 tokens from two stratified corpora of conversational Chilean Spanish recorded in the 1970s (the Habla culta ('educated speech') corpus (Rabanales and Contreras, 1979, 1990)) and 2010s (the Corpus of Conversational Santiago Spanish (CCSS) recorded by the researcher), respectively, this study explores three main themes: (i) the nature of the reported change; (ii) the relative degree of stigmatisation of the vos pronoun and voseo verb forms (e.g. Stevenson, 2007: 93); and given the rapid change, mixing of the paradigms and general lack of metalinguistic awareness about voseo (e.g. Hummel, 2010: 111-12), (iii) the extent to which speakers distinguish two separate paradigms, or conflate them into a single paradigm.
As well as confirming an increasing rate of voseo in real and apparent time, multivariate analyses of social factors examine stigmatisation, while priming and subject expression results address the question of speaker awareness. Subsequent analyses, using the Variationist Comparative Method (Poplack and Tagliamonte, 2001), compare the social and linguistic constraints governing variation in the speech of speakers 35 or under versus those over 35 in the CCSS, to provide a fine-grained picture of grammatical change. Not only do rates differ, but we see weakening of constraints, with some lost entirely, and others completely reversed. Analyses of speaker effects highlight the impact of data distribution across different contexts on the observed patterns. Inspection of lexical effects reveals the key role that one highly frequent fossilised form, cachai, may have played in promoting the change.
Results show that (1) the reported change is well advanced; (2) linguistic behaviour is not inconsistent with claims of stigmatisation, but effects are much more pronounced with the pronoun than the verb forms; and (3) despite a reported emphasis on pronouns and relative obliviousness to verbal morphology, speakers of Chilean Spanish are highly sensitive to the existence of two separate 2sg paradigms, which they are able to keep separate, and use adeptly for negotiating sociolinguistic meaning.

The drive that motivated this study was an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher's observation of a fossilized grammar pattern produced by students over an extended period of time. The fossilized pattern " I am go " frequently emerges in the EFL context of Saudi Arabia, for which a number of factors could be accountable, including overgeneralization of a grammar pattern, inadequate instruction, lack of negative and corrective feedback, being frequently exposed to peers' production of the fossilized pattern, and so forth. 155 undergraduate students from a Saudi university responded to a multiple-choice question with three options. The findings revealed that only one third of the participants identified the correct singular first person subject pronoun in English " I " , which corresponded to (‫)انا‬ in Arabic. Based on the results, pedagogical and methodological recommendations are made as to how the possibility of the emergence of the incorrect pattern in question can be reduced or minimized.

Bigelow and Tarone (2004) have proposed that second language (L2) learners with lower levels of first language (L1) literacy have difficulties in noticing the gap between their production and the input they received due to their limitations in metalinguistic awareness (a function of their low literacy level). However, none of the empirical studies these researchers conducted encompassed the assessment of the participants’ level of metalinguistic awareness. Thus, so as to contribute with empirical evidence for Bigelow and Tarone’s (2004)  proposal, I collected data with 24 Brazilians (beginning L2 learners of English), who performed tests of L1 literacy (PISA), L1 and L2 metalinguistic awareness (phonological, morphological, and syntactic), and pre- and post-tests of L2 proficiency (KET). The objective was twofold: to verify whether there was a correlation between one’s level of metalinguistic awareness and one’s literacy level and also to investigate whether any of these variables was effective in predicting participants’ L2 proficiency gains from the pre- to the post-test and their final grades at the end of one semester of an English course. Through the analyses of the data it was demonstrated  that (1) L1 literacy is related to L1 syntactic awareness, (2) L1 syntactic and phonological awareness transfer to the L2, (3) L1 phonological awareness has a detrimental role in L2 learning, and (4) L2 syntactic awareness has a beneficial role in L2 learning and in one’s L2 achievement. The thesis advanced is that engagement with the written code (at least for those readers with no limitations in phonological awareness) leads to the refinement of one’s syntactic awareness. This knowledge, in turn, is transferred to the L2 and aids its development. An implication from these results is that, differently from what Krashen (1982) claimed, there is, indeed, a role for explicit knowledge in L2 learning.

In everyday speech, language is often the topic of talk. In this paper we aim to draw attention to the role of such metalinguistic activity in early language development. We approach this topic through an ecological lens. To achieve this goal, we examine observational data from a single child participating in conversational episodes concerning linguistic phenomenadepisodes which we term "metalinguistic exchanges"dat 2 and 3 years old. We draw attention to how this child, at 2 years old, participates in naturallyoccurring metalinguistic exchanges without yet having a productive command of metalinguistic vocabulary. The sequential organization of the metalinguistic exchanges enables her caregivers to scaffold her participation. We then compare the child's participation in metalinguistic exchanges recorded at 2 years old with a second set of exchanges recorded when she turned 3. This comparison shows that the child's participation in metalinguistic exchanges becomes increasingly skillful and agentive as she learns to initiate metalinguistic exchanges herself. We end the paper with recommendations for future research in an ecological approach to language development. We suggest that, in order to investigate the role of metalinguistic activity in language development, it is crucial to look at children's increasingly skillful and agentive participation in naturally-occurring metalinguistic exchanges.

While metalinguistic awareness (MLA) has been shown to play a crucial role in second and third language acquisition (Cenoz, 2003), a variety of methodological approaches point to the difficulty of operationalizing the concept. The present study provides a critical analysis of MLA in relation to its measurement by means of a French-language test of metalinguistic ability. In this paper, the results on the Test d’habiletés métalinguistiques (THAM-3) (Pinto & El Euch, 2015) completed by 66 francophone college students in Québec are interpreted with reference to the notions of noticing and understanding. Nearly a third of the participants reached the highest level of metalinguistic analysis in the metasemantic section of the test, as opposed to only 5% in the metagrammatical part. An analysis of the coding procedures suggests that this tendency may be related to the fact that explicit reference to grammatical categories was required to attain maximal scores in the metagrammatical section, whereas metalinguistic terminology was not necessary to perform at this level in the metasemantic section. This critical view of the coding procedures used on the THAM-3 points to the need to re-evaluate the role of explicit knowledge of grammatical concepts and metalanguage in the measurement of MLA.

Studies suggest the influence of phonological processing on literacy, although there is controversy about the cognitive skills underlying this construct. This study investigated the contribution of phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming and visual processing in reading and writing performance of a sample of 50 students of the 3rd grade of an Elementary Public School. The results indicated that phonological awareness and phonological memory are the skills that contributed most to the initial performance in reading and writing. In respect of rapid naming, only the letters naming showed significant correlation with reading and writing and there was no correlation between visual processing and reading or writing. The exploratory factor analysis suggested the grouping of variables in three factors, the first formed by the phonological memory and phonological awareness, the second formed by the rapid naming and the third by the visual processing. 1 Artigo derivado da dissertação de mestrado da primeira autora sob a orientação da segunda, defendida em 2015,

Cross-linguistic research shows that some aspects of metalinguistic awareness are affected by characteristics of different writing systems. Users of writing systems that mark word boundaries (such as English) develop word awareness, while users of unspaced writing systems (such as Chinese) do not. Previous research showed that English-speaking users of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) have higher levels of Chinese word awareness than Chinese monolingual speakers. The present study aimed at disentangling the effects of bilingualism/biliteracy and the effects of L1 writing system characteristics by comparing users of Chinese whose L1 writing system does or does not mark word boundaries. Three groups (Chinese, English-Chinese and Japanese-Chinese) performed two Chinese word segmentation tasks. Results showed significant differences among the groups in mean word lengths and mean level of intra-group agreement. The English group had higher intragroup agreement rates and shorter word lengths than the other two groups; the Japanese group had higher agreement rates than the Chinese group. It is argued that Chinese word awareness as revealed by word segmentation tasks is mostly affected by literacy in a writing system that marks word boundaries, but bilingualism and biliteracy also play a role.

Recently, Bigelow, Delmas, Hansen, and Tarone (2006) argued that the differences in the oral performance of their L2 speakers (favoring the more literate ones) were probably due to their low level of metalinguistic awareness (which would be a consequence of their limited literacy). So as to contribute with evidence for this hypothesis, we collected data from 11 Brazilians, who performed tests of L1 literacy, L2 proficiency and L1 and L2 metalinguistic awareness (phonological, morphological, and syntactic) and a relationship between their L1 literacy and their L2 proficiency levels was, indeed, found. However, the role metalinguistic awareness (either in the L1 or the L2) plays in this relationship is not clear. While phonological awareness (in the L1 and in the

This paper provides evidence that the second language orthographic input affects the mental representations of L2 phonology in instructed beginner L2 learners. Previous research has shown that orthographic representations affect monolinguals' performance in phonological awareness tasks; in instructed L2 learners such representations could also affect pronunciation. This study looked at the phonological representations of Chinese rimes in beginner learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language, using a phoneme counting task and a phoneme segmentation task. Results show that learners do not count or segment the main vowel in those syllables where it is not represented in the pinyin (romanisation) orthographic representations. It appears that the pinyin orthographic input is reinterpreted according to L1 phonology-orthography correspondences, and interacts with the phonological input in shaping the phonological representations of Chinese syllables in beginner learners. This explains previous findings that learners of Chinese do not pronounce the main vowel in these syllables. INTRODUCTION The role of the orthographic input in the acquisition of second language phonology has been hitherto almost completely neglected. On the one hand, research on monolingual speakers shows that their performance in phonological awareness tasks is affected by orthographic representations. On the other hand, research on second language (L2) learners shows that their L2 pronunciation is affected by L2 orthographic representations. Do L2 orthographic representations affect the mental representations of L2 phonology in L2 learners, such leading to non-target-like pronunciations? This paper looks at the effects of some orthographic conventions of the pinyin romanization system on the phonological representations of Chinese syllables in instructed beginner learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL). It is proposed that the non-target-like pronunciation of some syllables by CFL learners can be attributed to the effects of the pinyin orthographic representations on learners' L2 phonological representations.

Based on the Germanic intercomprehension approach, this article presents the results of a quantitative study that tested metalinguistic knowledge of mono- and bilingual students. The goal of this study was to determine whether the students’ multilingualism can be regarded as a resource or rather as a barrier for solving intercomprehensive tasks. The study was conducted in the German speaking area with N=577 mono- and bilingual students of different age groups (5th and 10th grade). The comparisons of means (t-tests) show that multilingualism does not automatically lead to cognitive benefits in this type of task.

Este artículo presenta los principales resultados de un estudio que se propone el análisis de la actividad metalingüística durante el proceso de composición escrita en pequeño grupo y en el marco de una secuencia didáctica. La secuencia tiene como objetivo la elaboración de un texto académico a partir de la lectura de diferentes fuentes de documentación. Los datos se extraen, por lo tanto, de las conversaciones de dos equipos durante la escritura cooperativa a lo largo de tres sesiones. Entre las dos primeras y la tercera se introducen dinámicas de regulación externa. El trabajo muestra en qué momentos de la SD se produce la actividad metalingüística, permite conocer el contenido de esta actividad y su evolución, y señala los factores que fomentan la actividad metalingüística y la reflexión sobre la lengua, el texto y el discurso. //

This article presents the main results of a study that analyses the metalinguistic activity during the writing composition process in small groups and within the framework of an instructional sequence (IS). The sequence aims at the elaboration of an academic text from different sources of documentation. Data is, therefore, extracted from the conversations of two work teams during cooperative writing over three sessions. Between the first two sessions and the third one, external regulation dynamics are introduced. The research shows the moments in which the metalinguistic activity occurs, it allows to know the content of this activity as well as its evolution. It also points out some factors that promote the metalinguistic activity and the reflection on language, text and discourse.

Ao longo de vários anos de formação, temo-nos deparado com diversas dúvidas dos professores no que diz respeito ao papel da gramática nas aulas de língua estrangeira (LE), como se o seu ensino fosse antagónico de uma paradigma comunicacional.
O ensino da gramática no ensino das línguas constitui uma das componentes da competência comunicativa e duma abordagem comunicativa do processo de ensino-aprendizagem das línguas. Se comunicar pressupõe que o ator social (Conselho da Europa, 2001) instrumentalize estratégias que o ajudem a construir um enunciado adaptado ao contexto, essa mobilização implica saberes linguísticos de vária ordem, como a sintaxe, a morfologia, a pragmática, a prosódia no oral, saberes sociolinguísticos, no que se prende com a cultura alvo, e extralinguísticos, como a utilização do corpo e da voz na oralidade, aplicáveis tanto na língua materna (LM) como nas LE’s.  Nesta comunicação, a partir de um trabalho de investigação desenvolvido no âmbito da nossa tese de mestrado intitulada O processo de revisão da escrita em português língua estrangeira: propostas didáticas para o tratamento do erro, refletiremos sobre o papel da consciência metalinguística em atividades de conhecimento explícito da língua e sua operacionalização no contexto de produção escrita e, mais especificamente, de revisão de escrita.

Review of The Role of Metalinguistic Awareness in the Effective Teaching of Foreign Languages (Rethinking Education, vol. 10), by Anthony David Roberts (2011). Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 433 pages (Pbk), € 53.30, ISBN 978-3-0343-0280-7

In a previous study, we demonstrated that the experience of learning a new language positively influences the metacognitive awareness of young plurilingual children in terms of willingness to communicate and strategic competence. In the present study, we expanded the analyses of the observations of 101 children to examine two hypotheses. First, we hypothesized that the strategies reported by the children would group into a limited number of strategic clusters. Second, we predicted that the children's awareness of strategies would depend not only on the experience of learning a new language but also on age. The factor analysis of the strategies used indicated three clusters, which we termed Speaker, Hearer, and External orientations. The analyses showed a significant effect of learning a new language in a formal context and after the age of four years, abbreviated LLE, that is Language Learning Experience, on the Speaker orientation. In addition, age showed a linear effect on the three identified clusters of strategies. These findings are highly relevant as they may help to shed light into why young plurilingual learners use strategies differently.

Este artículo presenta los principales resultados de un estudio que se propone el análisis de la actividad metalingüística durante el proceso de composición escrita en pequeño grupo y en el marco de una secuencia didáctica. La secuencia tiene como objetivo la elaboración de un texto académico a partir de la lectura de diferentes fuentes de documentación. Los datos se extraen, por lo tanto, de las conversaciones de dos equipos durante la escritura cooperativa a lo largo de tres sesiones. Entre las dos primeras y la tercera se introducen dinámicas de regulación externa. El trabajo muestra en qué momentos de la SD se produce la actividad metalingüística, permite conocer el contenido de esta actividad y su evolución, y señala los factores que fomentan la actividad metalingüística y la reflexión sobre la lengua, el texto y el discurso.

Of the numerous factors affecting language development, a particular role has been assigned to Metalinguistic Awareness (MLA) as a major constituent of the cognitive development of experienced language learners, while being itself a key to accelerated language learning (e.g., Jessner, 2008). The present study explores the relationship between multilingual usage and MLA in French-speaking Quebeckers (n = 66) with different language backgrounds who start to learn German after English in a formal setting. 'Multilingual experience' was opera-tionalized by the frequency and the diversity of foreign language use across 10 different contexts of use. A reflexive dimension of MLA was assessed by means of the THAM-3 (Pinto & El Euch, 2015), and complemented by think-aloud protocols produced during a multilingual translation task, which reflected an applied dimension of MLA. Multiple regression analyses suggest that both frequency and diversity of non-native language use in specifically literacy-based activities predicted the applied dimension of MLA.

This study focuses on metalinguistic awareness (MLA) and its relation to academic achievement for mono-, bi- and multilingual adolescents in Denmark. While MLA is one of several cognitive measures positively related to bilingualism and bilingualism is associated with academic advantages, Danish bi-/multilingual pupils appear not to benefit from their knowledge of more languages as they lag behind their monolingual school peers. Therefore, this study aims to depict the distribution of MLA between different linguistic groups in a Danish school context and to determine whether there is a correlation between MLA and academic achievement. Additionally, the relationship between socioeconomic status and test results is investigated. Participants are categorised according to the languages they report using actively. 219 pupils aged 14–16, 106 monolingual and 113 bi-/multilingual, completed a questionnaire and a test of MLA, both in Danish. School leaving exam results and a measure of socioeconomic status were also obtained. While results show no distinct bi-/multilingual advantage on the test of MLA, a strong correlation between school leaving exam results and MLA is found. Furthermore, Danish proficiency and socioeconomic status accounts for some of the variation in test results, thus moderating test performance differences found between groups.

Se confrontata con quanto accade per altre discipline oggetto di insegnamento, come la storia, la geografia o le scienze naturali, la rappresentazione della linguistica come scienza che studia e descrive le lingue e il comportamento linguistico è vistosamente assente nei manuali scolastici, e tale pare essere nella percezione di docenti e studenti. Manca cioè, per usare una metonimia spesso adottata nei manuali scolastici, una narrazione del "mestiere del linguista". Sulla scorta di alcune proposte didattiche volte alla promozione di un approccio induttivo alla riflessione linguistica (Lo Duca 1997, 2018) e della varietà linguistica (Candelier et al. 2009), viene illustrata una sperimentazione didattica che mira a far conoscere ad alunni e insegnanti, attraverso concrete esperienze di scoperta linguistica, scopi, metodi e strumenti della linguistica.

In my chapter, I begin by presenting a brief overview of the changing role of grammar in foreign language settings and introduce a contemporary approach to teaching contextualized grammar through teachers’ own accidental, professional or personal reading/watching/listening experiences. The chapter also proposes a discussion of authentic-material-based grammar teaching and further investigates some of the issues connected to improving meta-linguistic awareness using concept check questions in language classrooms. I also offer promising data on an authenticity-based grammar course to develop learner autonomy and competencies.