ABSTRACT

While metalinguistic awareness (MLA) has been shown to play a crucial role in second and third language acquisition, a variety of methodological approaches point to the difficulty of operationalising the concept. The present study provides a critical analysis of MLA in relation to its measurement by means of a French-language test of metalinguistic ability. In this article, the results on the Test d’Habiletés Métalinguistiques (THAM-3) completed by 66 francophone college students in Québec are interpreted with reference to the notions of noticing and understanding. Nearly a third of the participants reached the highest level of metalinguistic analysis in the metasemantic section of the test, as opposed to only 5% in the metagrammatical part. An analysis of the coding procedures suggests that this tendency may be related to the fact that explicit reference to grammatical categories was required to attain maximal scores in the metagrammatical section, whereas metalinguistic terminology was not necessary to perform at this level in the metasemantic section. This critical view of the coding procedures used on the THAM-3 points to the need to re-evaluate the role of explicit knowledge of grammatical concepts and metalanguage in the measurement of MLA.

摘要

虽然已经证明元语言意识（MLA）在第二和第三语言习得中起着至关重要的作用，但是各种方法论方法都指出了对该概念进行操作的难度。本研究通过语言能力的法语测试，对MLA与其测量相关的分析进行了批判性分析。在这篇文章中，魁北克的66名法语国家大学生完成的“测试哈比莱特音乐学院（THAM-3）”的结果将参考关注和理解的概念进行解释。在测试的元语义部分中，将近三分之一的参与者达到了最高的语言学分析水平，而在元语法部分则只有5％。对编码过程的分析表明，这种趋势可能与以下事实有关：必须明确引用语法类别，才能在元语法部分中获得最高分，而在此级别的元语义部分中，无需使用语言学术语。THAM-3上使用的编码程序的这种批判性观点指出，有必要重新评估语法概念和元语言的显性知识在MLA度量中的作用。