Metalinguistic knowledge, metalingual knowledge, and proficiency in L2 Spanish

Abstract

The role of metalinguistic knowledge of language and knowledge of technical terms (i.e. metalingual knowledge) in second language (L2) learning and use is a matter of controversy in the field of Second Language Acquisition. This paper examines the development of these two types of knowledge in adult university-level learners of L2 Spanish, and their relationship to L2 proficiency. Metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge were measured using a metalinguistic knowledge test containing 16 sentences with an underlined error about a particular grammatical structure. The participants were asked to provide a written description of the rule that the error was violating. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data shows that, in general, learners demonstrated limited metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge. In addition, there was great variation regarding how close the learners’ verbalisations resembled pedagogical rules of the structures tested. Furthermore, the participants used very few technical terms, albeit mostly correctly, compared with the metalanguage found in those pedagogical rules. Finally, the results show that metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge correlated with written measures of L2 proficiency but not with oral proficiency. These results are discussed in light of previous research, and implications for future research are offered.

Keywords:

• metalinguistic knowledge
• metalingual knowledge
• L2 proficiency

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant from the University of Windsor. I am grateful to the students who volunteered to participate in the study and to their professors for allowing me access to their classes. I am also thankful to Jelena Primorac for rating some of the tests, to Sandra Gidak for her help in coding the data, and to a Language Awareness anonymous reviewer for the helpful comments and suggestions. All errors or omissions are my own.

Notes

1. An extensive discussion about the interface issue is beyond the scope of this paper. For a detailed discussion, the reader is referred to Dörnyei (2009), N. Ellis (2005, 2011), and R. Ellis (2009).

2. The frequency of these communicative activities increases somewhat in higher-level courses.

3. Obviously, there is no guarantee that all learners would actually reach the A2 level or the B1 level after three and five terms of exposure. In this regard, as pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, it is quite possible that some of the learners who received instruction during three terms would outperform some of the learners who received instruction during five terms in a standardised measure of proficiency.

4. For details about the grammaticality judgement tests, see Gutiérrez (2012).

5. Due to time and funding constraints on this project, these were the best available measures of L2 proficiency.

6. See http://diplomas.cervantes.es/aprender_espanol/informacion_dele.html

7. It is important to note that, unfortunately, the scores for each sub-component of the written tests were not made available to the researcher, and only total scores were provided. This is discussed as an important limitation of this study in the discussion section.

8. As noted by an anonymous reviewer, the lack of significant differences between the two groups could be a reflection of the potential overlap in proficiency between the strongest learners in the lower-level group and the weakest learners in the higher-level group (see note 3).

9. Translations of the Spanish words used by the learners in their verbalisations are provided in square brackets.

10. The figure in brackets indicates the number of participants who used each of the terms. It must be noted that related terms, such as ‘conjugation’, ‘to conjugate’, ‘conjugated’, were counted as the same.

11. Pearson product–moment correlations were also computed for the whole data set regarding those four scores, and the relationships among them were also highly significant.

12. It could very well be that metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge correlate differently with L2 reading than with L2 writing, for example. Additionally, as noted by an anonymous reviewer, it is possible, for instance, that grammatical accuracy in speaking correlates differently with those two types of knowledge than fluency.