Metalinguistic skill is the ability to assume an objective attitude toward language. Metalinguistic awareness is less easily acquired and appears later developmentally than speaking and listening skills. What one needs to know to perceive and use language is not necessarily the same thing that one needs to know to reflect on and comment on…

A study conducted in grades 4 and 5 in French Canadian schools in Atlantic Canada and Ontario investigated differences between students' vernacular and standard spoken French, with regard to learning how to eliminate interference in students' learning of standard usage. The discussion focuses on mistakes caused by borrowings from English,…

A study of language learning in Arctic Quebec examines relationships between early Inuktitut competence and later learning of English as a second language, general and local characteristics of native language competence, and early Inuktitut instruction and later competence. It also looks at the reliability of native educators' assessment of…