From metalinguistic instruction to metalinguistic knowledge, and from metalinguistic knowledge to performance in error correction and oral production tasks

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effect of metalinguistic instruction on students’ metalinguistic knowledge on the one hand, and on students’ performance in metalinguistic and oral production tasks on the other hand. Two groups of primary school students learning English as a foreign language were chosen. One of them (Rule group) was provided with metalinguistic instruction on English possessive determiners (PDs) for six weeks (N= 21), while the Comparison group (N= 22) did not receive such instruction. These students’ progress was analysed through a pre-test/post-test design by means of a written error correction task, a ‘free production’ oral task, and a metalinguistic judgement task. The results of the statistical analyses indicate that, although the learners in the Rule group were more advanced in their knowledge and use of the English PDs than their peers in the Comparison group, the differences between groups were not statistically significant in all the tests. Additional analyses revealed that there were correlations between students’ knowledge and performance in the Rule group, indicating that the learners who made the most gains from pre- to post-test were the ones who had demonstrated a more advanced knowledge of the rule.

Keywords:

• form-focused pedagogy
• metalinguistic awareness
• metalinguistic knowledge
• developmental stages
• EFL
• explicit instruction

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the TESOL International Research Fund (TIRF) as well as by grants HUM2007-64302 and 2009SGR137. I would like to thank Carmen Muñoz for her invaluable help and advice throughout the research process, and Joanna White and Laura Collins for the materials and design used in this study. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.