The Effects Of Bilingualism On Metalinguistic Awareness

By Author: Alex Lee
Total Articles: 366
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There have been many studies undertaken on the effects of bilingualism on metalinguistic awareness. Researchers include Ben-Zeev and Bialystok. This research has, according to Cenoz, associated bilingualism with a higher ability to reflect on language and to manipulate it. Ringbom presented one of the first renowned discussions of the acquisition of a third language in 1987. This work describes Sundqvist's study of school children, where Swedish-speaking Finns outperformed Finnish-speaking Finns in the learning of English as a Thomas Sabo Charm foreign language.

Thomas's study showed that English-Spanish bilinguals were found to have metalinguistic advantages over monolingual English students when learning French in a formal classroom environment. Bialystock makes reference to some tests which she carried out in order to assess metalinguistic capabilities in children. For example, she refers to grammaticality judgement tests carried out over a number of years on bilingual and monolingual children, whereby sentences were grammatically correct but contained a semantic ...
... error. According to the same author, Bilingual children have repeatedly been shown to solve these high control judgements more successfully than comparable monolingual children. Indeed, according to a number of studies mentioned by Bialystock in the same article, bilingual advantages have been shown for those tasks which involved high levels of control of processing.

With regard to literacy, researchers such as Bild and Swain, Klein, Thomas and Sagasta Errasti have shown that children who are exposed to two written codes have a better chance of developing a greater sensitivity towards language use and therefore, they may be faster at cracking the code of a third language. One of the central debates regarding the acquisition of more than two languages has been, clearly, the level of bilingualism required for the emergence of metalinguistic advantage. Eviatar and Ibrahim have reported that some researchers, such as Yelland have reported positive effects of bilingualism with only minimal exposure to the second language, while others, such as Cummins and Ricciardelli have suggested that these advantages may only be seen in children who have achieved a high level in both languages. Cummins' dual iceberg view of bilingualism has implications for the development of metalinguistic awareness.

The evidence would suggest that the metalinguistic awareness of more balanced bilinguals would be better developed than that of less balanced bilinguals. It has also been made explicit that the presence of three languages in the curriculum may improve children's levels of metalinguistic awareness. The evidence would seem to suggest that children in immersion programmes would attain a higher level of metalinguistic awareness than those children being educated in non-immersion programmes, thus providing a response to one of the Thomas Sabo Earrings main research questions.

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