A discussion of the relationships between communication in a foreign language and metalinguistic thought given to that language focuses on formal French language learning by adults in their home countries. Experience with adult language learners suggests a resistance to grammatical explanations but an openness to explanations of meaning. It would…

Certain aspects of meta-linguistic awareness are known to be essential for bilingual children's literacy acquisition. Phonological awareness is one of these skills. Beginning with a discussion of a pivotal developmental research model of control & analysis of cognitive skills in bilinguals, this review will discuss several studies that explored…

Makes a case for including corpus linguistics in initial language teacher education to enhance teachers' research skills and language awareness. Offers examples of corpus-based tasks for increasing students' understanding of word classes, register-related grammatical choices, and socioculturally conditioned grammatical choices. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the psychological factors that affect access to metalinguistic knowledge in second language (L2) production. A verbalization task was used to assess the metalinguistic knowledge about target uses and a judgment test was administered to determine relative prototypicality of these uses of 64 adult Chinese learners of English.…

Addresses the difficulties second language learners have using articles properly by examining the metalinguistic knowledge of the English article system that learners employ when selecting articles in a given situation. Attempts to better understand the process of "making sense" of the English article system by learners who are at different stages…

Contends that metalinguistic awareness can be used in a practical way to combat linguistic prejudice and bring about changes in attitudes. Describes two activities (developing a "greetings repertoire" and conducting an individual language profile) designed to assist children in understanding racism. (RS)

Elementary and secondary students (N=150) were given a forced-choice task of idiom understanding. Performance on tasks steadily improved with age, and idioms with higher familiarity and transparency were easier for students to understand. Results support the language experience model of figurative language development and the hypothesis that…

Discusses language awareness (LA) as a methodology in foreign language teaching, demonstrating that LA presumes not only linguistic awareness on the part of teachers but also an understanding of the learning and teaching processes this methodology promotes. Argues that training content needs to be educationally rather than linguistically…

Learners' grammaticality reactions emerge through cognitive processes and relate to the nature of the linguistic stimulus. Discussion of such metalinguistic judgments, particularly learners' tolerance of ill-formedness, attempts to clarify established perspectives, arguing that specific aspects of test strings may influence the saliency of certain…

Aspects of phenomenological psychology that contribute to a new concept of cultural studies are discussed. Separation of person, body, language, and culture is shown to be artificial. This concept of culture implies a new concept of language, which can be integrated into a program for teaching language awareness. (33 references) (Author/LB)

The possible relationship between metalingual knowledge in form of rules and communicative knowledge of language as demonstrated in second/foreign language production is examined. An emerging psycholinguistic monolingual production model is described. (52 references) (Author/LB)

Investigation of grammaticality judgments and decision times for 21 children in 2 age groups (ages 6-7 and ages 8-9) found good sensitivity to grammatical errors, with errors in word order more readily detected than errors of morphological selection. Older children processed errors somewhat more quickly. (Author/DB)

Studies of the impact of formal instruction consistently show that more instruction results in modest increases in consciously-learned competence, a conclusion that is consistent with the claims of the monitor hypothesis. Reviews research in which the impact of direct instruction in grammar is measured directly, discusses individual studies…

Investigated metalinguistic awareness in learning to read Spanish, focusing on print awareness, phonological awareness, decoding, and reading comprehension. Studies of 136 preliterate Spanish children indicated a relationship between phonological awareness and reading and revealed the importance of syllabic awareness in developing other levels of…

Discusses a conceptual framework outlining what is known about language development and metalinguistics, and considers ways in which this may provide a reference framework to guide the work of the various committees responsible for developing the language curriculum. The example of the curriculum in Ireland is used to explore the practical…