Examines the view that the items writers use to modify their claims in academic texts, commonly referred to as hedges and boosters, may actually be unnoticed by second language readers, a phenomenon known as the lexical invisibility hypothesis. Data is presented from a small retrospective think-aloud study that explores how 14 Cantonese first…

Discusses the value of second language (L2) learning and suggests that students who learn an L2 in school can develop literacy skills faster than students who do not learn an L2. Examines the role of metalinguistic awareness, the role of language learning in literacy development, and literacy in its cultural context. (Author/VWL)

This article presents parts two and three of a three-part article that explores the role that school language learning can play in the development of literacy, as well as the role that the teaching of literacy can play in language learning. (Author/VWL)

Describes the outcomes of an investigation into the misconceptions and difficulties encountered when learning grammar. The study is based on evidence collected from a class of 12-year-olds who were engaged in a work scheme focusing on grammar, and two cohorts of PGCE English students undertaking an intensive grammar course. (Author/VWL)

Describes how one short silent film, "The Painted Lady," may be used to build language and content knowledge in English-as-a-second-language (ESL) courses. Provides a representative list of titles and corresponding content areas to assist instructors in their efforts to incorporate silent film into ESL courses. (SG)

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relations between early bilingualism and phonological awareness in a sample of 75 Turkish-Dutch bilingual kindergarten children living in The Netherlands. In a longitudinal design, the children's first (L1) and second (L2) language abilities were measured at the beginning and end of…

This article explores young children's facility in phonological awareness tasks requiring either the detection or the articulation of head, coda, onset, and rime subsyllabic units shared in word pairs. Data are reported from 70 nonreading children and 21 precocious readers attending preschools. Prereading children were able to articulate shared…

This paper explores the sociolinguistic awareness in English of tertiary level students in Hong Kong and Wuhan (Mainland China). The language data consisted of specific instances when a native speaker presenter made changes, in the course of oral delivery, to the written text of a conference paper that she had prepared in advance. Matched pairs of…

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…