Session Information
31 SES 04 B, Interactions Between Multilingualism and Metalinguistic Awareness in Educational Sciences
Symposium
Contribution
One considerable consequence of current and past migration flows is the increasing language diversity in society as well as educational systems. Therefore, language diversity is relevant in the school context, particularly in language classes, since linguistic and cultural diversity influences the development of learners' heritage, second and further languages. This situation should be perceived as an opportunity to interact with the language resources of students and use them to extend language acquisition.
The symposium entitled "Interactions between Multilingualism and Metalinguistic Awareness in Educational Sciences" will address topics such as "Multilingualism" and "Metalinguistic Awareness" and their role in future research in educational as well as linguistic sciences and neighboring disciplines.
Multilingualism, as a broad concept, is a general and current phenomenon, predominantly present in schools. Metalinguistic awareness may be defined as the ability to reflect on and talk about linguistic phenomena in order to adapt one’s own language behavior to a linguistic norm or certain situation (Wildemann et al., 2016). Enhancing metalinguistic awareness is one of the main goals of first- and second-language lessons in school. “Children raised in multilingual contexts develop specific metalinguistic abilities, which result in an increased language awareness” (Bialystok, 1991, p. 134). Therefore, explicitly making language(s) a subject of discussion leads to improvements in language skills and metalinguistic awareness (Spada & Tomita, 2010). Interactions between multilingualism and metalinguistic awareness manifest themselves in language education areas, potentially enhancing the language abilities of all children, independently of their heritage language or the performance level of the institutional language.
Multilingualism and metalinguistic awareness overlap in tasks such as multilingual language reflection, in which students discover linguistic specifics by comparing different heritage and foreign languages. The learning outcomes of foreign-language learners are reported to significantly correlate with explicit language reflection (see also meta-analyses Norris and Ortega, 2000; Ellis, 2002; Spada and Tomita, 2010). Moreover, language reflection as a task of language lessons in school leads to improvements in language skills and metalinguistic awareness (Hyland, 2003; Siepmann, 2007). The purpose of language reflection should be to develop an inclusive learning context across different levels of education. Besides being an expression of culture and identity, the interaction between multilingual education and language reflection is a resource for learning which enhances metalinguistic awareness.
Teaching concepts that consider the use of multilingualism as a resource in language lessons and, therefore, stimulate language performance and metalinguistic awareness may be an eagerly expected contribution to educational and linguistic research in the future. Based on these topics, the symposium will contribute to the general call of the conference and pick up on the main theme “Education in an Era of Risk – the Role of Educational Research for the Future”.
References
Bialystok, Ellen (1991). Metalinguistic Dimensions of Bilingual Language Proficiency: In: Dies. (Ed.): Language Processing in Bilingual Children. Cambridge: CUP, 113-140. Ellis, Rod (2002). Does Form-Focused Instruction Affect the Acquisition of Implicit Knowledge? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Vol. 24/02, 223-236. Hyland, Fiona (2003). Focusing on Form: Student Engagement with Teacher Feedback. System 31 (2), 217–230. Norris, John M. & Ortega, Lourdes (2000). Effectiveness of L2 Instruction: A Research Synthesis and Quantitative Meta-Analysis. Language Learning, Vol. 50, 417-528. Siepmann, Dirk (2007). Wortschatz und Grammatik: zusammenbringen, was zusammengehört. Beiträge zur Fremdsprachen-vermittlung, 46, 59-80. Spada, Nina & Tomita, Yasuyo (2010). Interactions between Type of Instruction and Type of Language Feature: A Meta-Analysis. Language Learning 60, 263-308. Wildemann, Anja; Akbulut, Muhammed; Bien-Miller, Lena (2016). Mehrsprachige Sprachbewusstheit zum Ende der Grundschulzeit –Vorstellung und Diskussion eines Elizitationsverfahrens. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht Jg. 21, Nr. 2, 42-56.
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