Children's Metalinguistic Awareness in L1 and L2: a Sociocognitive Perspective

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Pietilä, P. & O-P. Salo (eds.) 1999. Multiple Languages – Multiple Perspectives. AFinLA Yearbook 1999. Publications de l’Association Finlandaise de Linguistique Appliquée 57. pp. 218–227.

CHILDREN’S METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS IN L1 AND L2: A SOCIOCOGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Kari Sajavaara, Riikka Alanen, Hannele Dufva, Katja Mäntylä, Merja Pääkkönen & Soile Saarela University of Jyväskylä

The relationship of metalinguistic awareness and learning of foreign languages, in this case English, by monolinguals in a formal school context has received very little attention. The project seeks answers to questions such as: (1) What is the nature of metalinguistic awareness in general? (2) What are the specific metalinguistic knowledge and skills learners develop during the first school years and how does developing literacy influence them? (3) What is the relationship between particular (socio)cognitive constructs and skills (eg. reading skill, verbal working memory, foreign language aptitude) and metalinguistic awareness? (4) How do metalinguistic knowledge and skills affect foreign language learning? and (5) To what extent are metalinguistic knowledge and skills socially constructed? An attempt is made to integrate both cognitive and social viewpoints in the study of metalinguistic awareness to obtain a comprehensive understanding of language learners’ metalinguistic awareness. The project focuses on a group of learners (N=20) in one school class who will be examined from the beginning of their comprehensive school career through grades 1–6.

Keywords: metalinguistic awareness, second/foreign language learning, mother tongue, consciousness

1 INTRODUCTION

In the past few years, different aspects of human consciousness have been studied extensively within eg. philosophy, cognitive science and neuro-sciences. Furthermore, the relationship between language and consciousness has also been widely studied, the role of consciousness and/or awareness in first language acquisition and L2 language learning in particular. The present research project focuses on the issue of Finnish 223 children’s metalinguistic awareness and its role in the foreign language learning process. The six-year project was launched in autumn 1998. The definitions of what is linguistic or metalinguistic awareness differ. According to Bowey (1988: 3), linguistic awareness has been defined as "accessible knowledge concerning the structure and function of language". She constrasts this "explicit accessible knowledge" with the "implicit or tacit knowledge that is used to comprehend and produce language, knowledge that Chomsky (1965) termed linguistic competence." This tacit knowledge must be inferred from performance data that are not always direct reflections of linguistic competence. As Bowey (1988: 3) notes, just as it is not possible to study linguistic competence directly, it is not possible to study linguistic awareness (accessible linguistic knowledge) directly. Bowey operationally defines linguistic awareness, or metalinguistic functioning as the ability to reflect on and manipulate the structural features of language. Metalinguistic performance thus requires the language system (rather than intended meaning) to be treated as an object of thought. Bowey (1988: 3) sees an attention shift from content to form as the basic feature of metalinguistic functioning, similar in her view to Cazden's (1974) notion of the ability to make language froms and functions ‘opaque'. "Any activity in which attention is focused on language structure, rather than upon meaning, may thus be considered metalinguistic in nature" (Bowey 1988: 3). Gombert (1992: 4) points out the difference between the linguists’ and psychologists’ definition of metalinguistic. According to him, the psycholinguistic, or psychologist’s meaning of the term 'metalinguistic' is broader and refers to the conscious management (reflection on or intentional control over) of the language objects, either as objects per se or in terms of the use to which they are put. Thus metalanguage or metalinguistic activities are a subfield of metacognition concerned with language and its use – in other words comprising: (1) activities of reflection on language and its use; (2) subjects' ability intentionally to monitor and plan their own methods of linguistic processing (in both comprehension and production). These activities and abilities may concern any aspect of language, whether phonological (in which case we speak of metaphonolo- gical activities), syntactic (metasyntactic activities), semantic (meta- semantic activities) or pragmatic (metapragmatic activities). Following French research tradition, Gombert (1992: 13) makes a distinction between metalinguistic and epilinguistic activities. Epilinguistic activities are types of behaviour manifested from an early age which are related to metalinguistic behaviour but are not consciously monitored by 224 the subject. Such activities in the subject's behaviour are, in fact, “explicit manifestations of a functional awareness of the rules of the organisation or use of language" (Gombert 1992: 13). How to distinguish between epilinguistic activities on one hand, and metalinguistic activities on the other hand, is one of the intriguing questions in this field of study. Gombert (1992: 8) argues that metalinguistic reflection may result in cognitive products, or symbolic objects which are easily perceived and frequently manipulated by the child and which are important for the general development of thought and, more specifically, for metacognitive development. According to our working definition, metalinguistic awareness refers to children’s knowledge of language structure and language use, as apparent in their verbal behaviour and/or as indicated by their test achievement. Following Gombert, we aim to focus on metalinguistic activities as defined by, firstly, the conscious reflections of children on language, and secondly, children’s' ability intentionally to monitor their own linguistic processing. By metatheoretical discussion and interpretation of our data, we aim at a theoretical clarification of various concepts (consciousness, awareness, explicit vs. implicit knowledge etc.) around the issue of what individuals (here: children) know about their language.

2 GOALS

The overall goal of the project is to examine the nature of Finnish children’s metalinguistic awareness in L1 and L2 by using 1) tests developed to measure different aspects of metalinguistic awareness and 2) children’s and teachers’ interviews, classroom observations and 3) other data (such as children’s verbal performance, teaching materials, evaluation etc.). Second, we aim at studying the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and some cognitive (eg. intelligence, working memory) and socioeconomic factors. Third, we will investigate the relationship between cognitive factors and the language behaviour and language proficiency of the children participating in the study. The theoretical background aims at combining the recent developments within the psychologically and linguistically oriented research on children’s L1 (Gombert 1992) and foreign language learners’ L2 (Alanen 1995, 1997) metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness to the sociocognitive view on language, as expressed, for example, in Vygotskyan and Bakhtinian (Dufva et al. 1996, Dufva 1998) approaches. 225

As Wertsch (1991: 2) notes, in psychological research there has been a tendency to investigate human functioning as if it existed in a cultural, institutional, and historical vacuum. It is often assumed that it is possible, or desirable, to study the individual, or specific areas of mental functioning in the individual, in isolation. According to Wertsch (1991: 3), this has had the consequence of cutting psychological research off from other academic disciplines. As a remedy, Wertsch (1991: 4) advocates conducting research into "concrete empirical problems but in such a way that it always remains anchored in some more general picture". Thus the overall aim of the project is the integration of the cognitive and social perspectives in the study of metalinguistic awareness. Special emphasis will hence be placed on studying the different environments of metalinguistic and metacognitive development, ie. the child’s linguistic affordances1 (see eg. van Lier 1996) in and out classroom. The research project aims at increasing knowledge about how the language knowledge and language skills of school age children develop, a goal particularly important since the data at this stage of language development is still scarce if compared to the early (pre-school) years of language acquisition. At a national level, it is of particular significance to examine the relationship between mother tongue and foreign language knowledge for the purpose of language education and language planning in questions like immersion or teaching content in a foreign language.

3 DESIGN AND METHODS

Methodologically, the study is a combination of longitudinal and cross- sectional studies. The participants are pupils at two different school grades. The project focuses on the pupils in one first grade class, who are examined from the beginning of their comprehensive school career through grades 1–6. At this point, the children of this class (N = 20) have been interviewed and the first tests of metalinguistic awareness are being carried out. Their classroom work has been observed for a week and a part of their written productions (such their first written words) have been collected and will be used as data as well. Parallel to the study of the first graders, a

1 Affordance is a term first used by J. Gibson (1979), in whose work it refers to what the environment offers, or provides for an organism as perceptual data. Van Lier (1996) has used the term in the sense of the language data available for language learners. Both stress the systemic relation between the ‘perceiver’ and ‘perceived’. 226 group of 3rd graders (N = 22) are examined as to the development of metalinguistic awareness, focussing on the effect of their starting to learn English as a foreign language. These children have also been interviewed. The aim is to approach children’s awareness from several viewpoints. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used also later on in data collection. The emphasis is laid on studying the children as individuals and devising an individual profile for each child concerning his/her particular abilities, thus also examining their individual development.

4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

One of the main research questions is how metalinguistic awareness of L1 influences foreign language learning and metalinguistic awareness of L2: does knowledge of L1 developed by children while reflecting on their own language (such as what a sound is, what the relationship between a sound and letter is, what a 'morpheme' is, what a word is, etc.) affect their foreign language learning and metalinguistic awareness of L2 and how. Do Finnish children have – as a result of metalinguistic processes concerning their own language – different cognitive products, the "symbolic objects", than children speaking some other language? Is their notion what a letter, a word, a sentence is different? How does this affect their learning of a foreign language? This project is an attempt to study these and like questions in a concrete framework of formal learning environment, aknow- ledging that children's metalinguistic awareness and linguistic behaviour are formed by and develop in a social context. Following areas particularly will be investigated:

1. What is the nature of metalinguistic awareness in general? The project aims through metatheoretical discussions and conceptual analysis at a clarification of the concept of metalinguistic awareness itself. This includes the exploration of what and how children know about their language(s).

2. What are the specific metalinguistic knowledge and skills learners develop during the first school years and how does developing literacy influence them? Metalinguistic knowledge and skills are operationalized through metalinguistic activities as they appear in (1) performance on and during tests developed to measure different aspects of metalinguistic awareness; 227

(2) children’s and teachers’ interviews and classroom observations; (3) other linguistic data such as children’s written productions and verbal performance in social interaction with their peers, teachers and examiners. Data collected so far include (1) in the first grade (N = 20): test results from five tests on metalinguistic awareness and four tests on reading skill from the Comprehensive School Reading Test; Morphology test (Lyytinen 1988); Metalinguistic Concept Test (based on Blodgett and Cooper 1987); and (2) in the third grade (N = 22): three tests on syllabic awareness in Finnish, Finnish nonwords and English. In addition, the project also has collected interview data from all students (ca. 22 hrs of audio tapes) and the first grade teacher (ca. 90 minutes) and samples of the first graders’ written productions which have been scanned as computer graphic files.

3. What is the relationship between particular (socio)cognitive constructs and skills (intelligence, phonological working memory, attention, foreign language aptitude, motivation, reading skill, socioeconomic background) and metalinguistic awareness?

4. How do metalinguistic knowledge and skills affect foreign language learning? We are particularly interested in the following questions: (1) Do learners whose metalinguistic awareness is higher also have higher language proficiency, in English in this case? (2) Do learners who are particularly good at certain types of metalinguistic activities have different language proficiency from those learners who are good at other types of metalinguistic activities? (3) To what extent is success in particular types of metalinguistic activities related to success at language studies fostered in a formal school context? The foreign language learning process is most often studied through its products. The relationship between children’s metalinguistic awareness, as apparent in our experimental and interview data, will be compared to their language proficiency, as manifested in assessment and evaluation practices of the school, their written and spoken productions, and language proficiency tests.

5. To what extent are metalinguistic knowledge and skills socially constructed? Metalinguistic awareness is viewed in the project as a result of on-going cognitive and social construction. Moreover, one of the aims of the project 228 is to regard what types of affordances (see e.g. van Lier 1996) exist for the child in the classroom and its practices and, for example, what the materials and practices through which the knowledge of language is mediated are. From this viewpoint, we will study linguistic and teaching practices and ideologies with the help of teachers’ interviews and also examine teaching materials and classroom interaction.

5 DIFFERENT VIEWS TO METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS

In various sub-studies, the development of phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical and pragmatic awareness will be investigated during the early school years. School age was chosen, because during this period children learn new skills in their mother tongue (such as learning to read and write), learn new modes of discourse (ie., participation in classroom discourse), possibly are acquainted with new norms and ways of using language (such as standard language) and also begin their foreign language studies (usually in the 3rd grade, usually English). For the development of metalinguistic awareness, this period is bound to be of significance. Exploring the children’s awareness from various viewpoints we aim at having a holistic view on how awareness of language is formed and how various aspects of mother tongue awareness are related to each other and to foreign language learning and awareness.

5.1 Phonological awareness

The development of phonological awareness appears to play a significant role in learning to read; on the other hand, various sorts of analytical abilities seem to be important in foreign language learning. Phonological awareness refers here primarily to segmental awareness (awareness of the sounds of a word) and syllable awareness. At this phase of the project, phonological awareness of children is measured primarily with the help of The Comprehensive School Reading Test (Lindeman 1998), which taps on their segmental and syllabic awareness. Also, children’s own observations of their learning to read and write are used, and their school work is examined. Morever, some attention is paid to studying children’s difficulties in learning to read and write and their special education teacher is interviewed. Of special interest is also the relationship between the type of orthography, phonological awareness and learning to read and write. 229 5.2 Morphological and syntactic awareness

To study children’s morphological skills, a test developed for the study of normal and abnormal language development among pre-schoolers by Paula Lyytinen (Lyytinen 1988) at the University of Jyväskylä is used. In the test, the children were asked to complete a sentence with a non-word (obsolete Finnish vocabulary items were used for this purpose). To carry out this task, children had to be able to apply appropriate inflectional suffixes to the words. To help children, the test is administered with the help of a series of picture cards depicting characters carrying out various actions referred to by the non-words. The test requires children to focus on linguistic form; it also involves aspects of working memory and attention. Children’s syntactic awareness will also be covered. It has been suggested, for example, that syntactic awareness may play a role in helping children to infer meanings of strange words. Syntactic awareness has often been studied by asking children to judge the acceptability of ungrammatical sentences; asking children to correct ungrammatical sentences; or asking children to listen to spoken sentences with a word missing and fill them in (oral cloze) (eg. Blackmore and Pratt 1997). In this study, children will be asked to correct a set of sentences spoken by a puppet/fictional character who “cannot yet speak properly”.

5.3 Lexical awareness

This substudy aims at investigating the development of children's lexical awareness at the stage when they gain a whole new perspective to language as they learn to read and write, and become acquainted with a foreign language. This is worthwhile since the scarce vocabulary studies there are concentrate on more advanced learners. This study will look at how lexical awareness and, on the other hand, lexical skills develop and affect each other. Also, the study aims at finding out how vocabulary and its role and significance are presented in a formal learning environment. The research aims at finding answers to such questions as what children's conception of "a word" is and how children perceive the structure of words. Also, the study will investigate how well children understand and recognise mother tongue words, how they cope with word production and whether there are any differences in conceptions about native/foreign language words. Also, the role of reading and writing in lexical awareness is discussed. In all, the study aims at commenting on the role of vocabulary in language teaching. 230 5.4 Pragmatic awareness

The aim of this part of the study is to look at how children’s pragmatic awareness develops during the early school years. The study concen- trates on two aspects of pragmatic awareness: first, what children know about language use and the social and contextual factors that affect the usage, and second, how a child experiences himself as a language user. The focus is mainly on children’s mother tongue, ie. Finnish, but awareness of foreign language is taken into account all along. Pragmatic awareness is defined as awareness of different ways of using language, words, and expressions suitable in different contexts, different groups of language users and the social and cultural rules that govern linguistic usage in a certain situation. First findings suggest that while first-grade children have very little explicit, verbalizable knowledge on pragmatic matters such as dialectal differences and different registers, third-graders clearly are more aware on such matters.

6 FINDINGS

Our first observations and findings seem to indicate that the metalinguistic awareness may indeed develop dramatically during the early school years. As the children accomplish new mother tongue skills by learning to read and write, and at the same time are acquainted with the institutional learning environment, they are forced towards continuously paying attention to new aspects of language. At seven, most children do not seem to be able to verbalize their knowledge of their own language, different foreign languages, or pragmatic conventions of their linguistic community. By third grade, however, at the age of nine, the children’s verbal observations about language and languages are clearly more common and more adult-like. However, in most respects even first-graders are quite competent users of spoken language – they have mastered all the fundamental features of their spoken mother tongue and they clearly have assumed various norms about the spoken discourse in and out classroom. As members of a school class, they are a proper discourse community, who share rules how to talk with each other and with their teacher and other adults present in the classroom. Thus there seems to be a gap, in some respects at least, between the verbalizable, explicit knowledge and their language behaviour. There are also some hints that explicit metalinguistic awareness develops strongly during the first school years, children having 231 acquired new tools for ‘linguistic analysis’ in the institutional setting. At this phase, it remains still to be seen what different tests will reveal about the nature of their epilinguistic and metalinguistic activities.

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