Abstract

‘High-quality talk’ is a fundamental principle of many approaches to teaching grammar. However, relatively few studies have attempted to characterize this talk with attention to the ways in which classroom dialogue might engender metalinguistic thinking. This paper explores how the concepts of procedural and declarative metalinguistic knowledge may be applied to classroom discourse in order to identify the problems and potentials of grammatical ‘Metatalk’. The data is drawn from observations of functionally-oriented grammar lessons in 17 classrooms across England. This opportunity sample was drawn from the intervention group of a randomized control trial, all of whom were working within a pedagogical model which embeds attention to grammar as a resource for meaning-making within the teaching of writing. Given the impact of effective teacher-student dialogue on student learning, studies such as this are valuable for illuminating how classroom talk operates within the teaching of grammar for writing. The findings particularly reveal the role of teacher-guided talk during collaborative writing activities in facilitating bi-directional transfer between declarative and procedural metalinguistic knowledge.

摘要

“高质量的谈话”是许多语法教学方法的基本原则。然而，相对较少的研究试图通过关注课堂对话可能产生元语言思维的方式来描述这种谈话。本文探讨了如何将程序性和陈述性元语言知识的概念应用于课堂话语，以识别语法“元对话”的问题和潜力。这些数据来自对英格兰 17 间教室中以功能为导向的语法课程的观察。这个机会样本来自随机对照试验的干预组，他们都在一个教学模式下工作，该模式将注意力嵌入到语法作为写作教学中意义构建的资源中。鉴于有效的师生对话对学生学习的影响，此类研究对于阐明课堂谈话在写作语法教学中的运作方式很有价值。研究结果特别揭示了在协作写作活动中教师指导的谈话在促进陈述性和程序性元语言知识之间的双向转移方面的作用。