Current research on language learning and education for plurilingualism has shown that it is important for pupils who are learning a new language to make use of the languages they already know. Pupils are better able to do this when they have a high degree of "metalinguistic awareness" (MLA), which means that they are able to use what they know about language in general as a means of making sense of what they are trying to learn. Though researchers agree that MLA is important, it is not well understood in early instructed language learning (learning a language at elementary school). Against this background, the MetaLearn project investigates young learners' MLA and its development in early instructed language learning and explores how MLA can be promoted in the classroom. For Norway, MetaLearn will thus provide an urgently needed background for promoting plurilingualism in all pupils - whether children with Norwegian as their home language or children with a minority language background - which can help schools and teachers to empower all pupils to exploit the full potential of their language competence and to provide a firm basis for them to develop as plurilingual citizens.
In 2020/2021, MetaLearn developed a test to assess MLA in the Norwegian context. This "MetaLearn-test” was pre-tested with 350 pupils from seven Norwegian elementary schools with the purpose of constructing two parallel tests with equal levels of difficulty and discrimination, which is necessary to be able to compare pupils of different grades and to map development over time. From 2021 to 2023, MetaLearn has followed the development of 175 pupils at five different schools, from the beginning of third to the end of fourth grade. The pupils all took the MetaLearn-test, as well as standardized tests of Norwegian and English language proficiency, logical thinking, and reading fluency in Norwegian. Additionally, MetaLearn collected relevant background information, such as participants’ home language(s), through a parental questionnaire. In 2021/2022, MetaLearn conducted the first and the second round of data collection and in spring 2023 the third and final one.
Data from the three administrations of the MetaLearn-test confirmed that the test worked as intended, and that the two parallel tests were equally difficult and can be used to map development over time. The test results showed a wide range of scores for third graders’ MLA and its subdimensions, meaning that some first graders were already very metalinguistically aware, whereas others showed very little evidence of MLA. Also, there were differences in how well the third grades performed in the different subdimensions of MLA. Additionally, third graders who scored higher on the MetaLearn-test overall performed better on tests measuring their English proficiency. The third graders’ MLA and their degree of multilingualism (excluding school-English), however, were not found to be related. Further analyses of the test results demonstrated that, overall, pupils’ MLA and its subdimensions developed significantly over the two school years. At the same time, we observed a variety of developmental paths.
MetaLearn also studies teachers’ thoughts and opinions about MLA and aims to explore how MLA can be promoted in the classroom. To this end, MetaLearn developed and administered a questionnaire which investigates teachers’ attitudes towards MLA. Additionally, the MetaLearn team interviewed all participating teachers of English and Norwegian with the help of an interview guide developed in the project. After that, some of their teaching was observed and, finally, a personalized follow-up interview was conducted based on teachers’ answers in the first interview and the classes observed.
MetaLearn also tested a classroom intervention where children worked with translation-based tasks. By inviting learners to draw comparisons across languages, translation activities have the potential to promote metalinguistic thinking. The aim of the intervention was to investigate how this potential can be exploited in the classroom. We view translation as an act of mediation, that is, as a communicative event where pupils take on the role of mediators to convey the content of a text to another person(s) who does not have access to it. This allows for comparison between languages that is contextualized and where emphasis is placed on communication. The intervention was carried out in three schools, where pupils collaborated on translation tasks over the course of one semester. Audio-recordings, and pupils’ translated texts and group discussions provide insight into the pupils’ metalinguistic thinking. The potential of translation tasks for promoting MLA is evident in the initial analysis and will be explored in more detail in subsequent investigations. The tasks and experiences from this part of the project have recently been published in a practical handbook for teachers on the project website.
The state of the art in language acquisition research and education for plurilingualism suggests that it is important for pupils to draw on the languages they already know when they are learning a foreign language. This strategy is facilitated when pupils have what is called metalinguistic awareness (MLA), which means that they can make use of metalinguistic knowledge in specific instances, i.e. knowledge about language in general, rather than about a language in particular. MLA has been identified as an important element in fostering plurilingualism. Despite its apparent importance we still know little about MLA and especially about how it develops in instructed language-learning, in Norway and internationally. MetaLearn's overarching objective is therefore to map, for the early stages of formal education, (a) how metalinguistic awareness develops in its interdependency with a set of contextual, individual, and language-related variables, and (b) whether and how learners' MLA can be promoted in the classroom. MetaLearn thereby contributes substantially to the advancement of research on MLA, internationally and nationally. For Norway, MetaLearn also provides an urgently needed background for promoting plurilingualism in all pupils, whether children with Norwegian as their home language or children with a minority language background, which can help schools and teachers to empower all pupils to exploit the full potential of their language competence.
