Data are presented on some aspects of metalinguistic awareness in Dutch adults who emigrated to Australia at least 25 years ago. The findings show that the migrants do not differ significantly from a control group in the Netherlands, suggesting that first-language metalinguistic skills are extremely resistant to attrition. (Contains nine…

Drawing on sociopsychological theory and research on intergroup relations, it is argued that awareness should not necessarily lead to tolerance. An exploratory study of 253 American students showed only extremely modest and uncertain relationships between language awareness and tolerance. (37 references) (Author/LB)

Reports on a study that started out as an investigation into learner training, but evolved into a more holistic study on consciousness raising. The study was carried out in a university-level English reading course that incorporates learner training sessions and group work. (Author/VWL)

Examined the evolution of metalinguistic skills (phonological and syntactical awareness) of 46 French-speaking children from kindergarten to the end of first grade and the relationship between those abilities and text comprehension. Found that metalinguistic skills progressed significantly, and syntactical awareness (word counting ability and…

Argues that to understand why bilingual support operates as it does in classrooms in the United Kingdom, it has to be seen in the context of the parameters it is allowed by institutionally constructed discourses and classroom routines of mainstream teachers' practice. Suggests that to design effective forms of bilingual support, there is a need to…

Offers immersion classroom data focusing on the use of collaborative tasks related to the content to be learned that draw learners attention to formal properties of French. Such tasks provide both oral practice and lead to more accurate language use. (Author/VWL)

Metadiscourse is self-reflective linguistic expressions referring to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text. It is based on a view of writing as a social engagement and, in academic contexts, reveals the ways writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitudes and commitments. In this…

This article reports on the Slovene share in the European project called Janua Linguarum--The Gateway to Languages. It highlights its forerunners and its outcomes, and gives an illustrative example of how primary school students encounter and explore various languages by using a relatively novel, plurilingual approach. All the materials produced…

This paper discusses strategies of intercomprehension in the context of the promotion of plurilingualism and intercultural competence in Europe. Plurilingualism and intercomprehension are concepts of particular importance in the multilingual and multicultural European context. These are explicit aims and requirements of the European Union when…

This paper aims to shed light on the explicit-implicit paradigm contention in connection with the foreign language area of English spelling. To this end, it frames the subject against the backdrop of the prolonged dispute between implicit, whole language, top-down, or whole-to-part approaches and explicit, traditional, bottom-up, or part-to-whole…

How are metalinguistic skills associated with vocabulary knowledge in languages with contrasting phonological and morphological properties? To address this question, tasks of phonological awareness and morphological awareness, other reasoning and literacy-related skills, and measures of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese and English, were…

This study measured the analysis of verbal flows by means of volume-elasticity measures and the analysis of information flow structures and their representations in the form of a metaphysical cube. A special purpose system of computer programs (PERTEX) was used to establish the language space in which the textual flow patterns occurred containing…

This study examined different shades of meaning that a single word may have in Chinese in an effort to better understand the relationship between language and culture. An understanding of the exact meaning of Chinese words and expressions can greatly assist non-Chinese in understanding both the language and the society as a whole. A total of 102…

Noting that language study (one leg of the traditional English tripod of language, literature, and composition) has received mixed attention internationally and is almost forgotten in North America, this paper presents a rationale for researching language awareness and three instruments that can be used in such research. The paper begins with…

Studied language choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families living in the Netherlands. Findings indicate that parents do not categorize metalinguistic activity and reasoning as school-related, although they do categorize counting as such and tend to…