Development of Metalinguistic Awareness
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Development of Metalinguistic Awareness
has been defined as “planned by the teacher inside the classroom and can refer to the use of different languages for input and output or to other planned strategies based on the use of students’ resources from the whole linguistic repertoire” (Cenoz 2017, p. 194).
“Pedagogical translanguaging applies exclusively to educational contexts and has pedagogical purpose in that it mediates learning when multilingual resources are used” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.18).
“Pedagogical translanguaging as an approach is based on theoretical principles and learning theories that can promote the development of multilingualism” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.19).
There are “… some theoretical concepts that are relevant to the development and implementation of pedagogical translanguaging” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.17). They are: prior knowledge, scaffolding and connected growers.
“Pedagogical translanguaging embraces different pedagogical practices, but they all use resources from the students’ whole linguistic repertoire and are planned by the teacher with a pedagogical purpose” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.30).
“Cenoz and Gorter (2020) explain that pedagogical translanguaging can take many shapes, but it also shares some core characteristics” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.23).
Cenoz & Gorter 2018 created the concept Focus on Multilingualism (FoM). “Focus on Multilingualism implies that multilinguals are different from monolinguals and are not expected to have the same level of proficiency in each of the languages in their multilingual repertoire. It also implies that the model of the monolingual native speaker is no longer valid for the multilingual and dynamic societies in the twenty-first century. Focus on Multilingualism goes against traditional perspectives that emphasize language separation and aims at softening boundaries between languages as that language users make the most of their own multilingualism”.
Focus on Multilingualism has three dimensions:
(Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.14).
“Pedagogical translanguaging is based on how learning occurs and prior knowledge or pre-existing knowledge is recognized as essential” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.19).
“There is a good deal of evidence that learning is enhanced when teachers pay attention to the knowledge and beliefs that learners bring to a learning task, use this knowledge as a starting point for new instruction, and monitor students’ changing conceptions as instruction proceeds” (Brandsford et al. 2000, p.11)
“Prior knowledge already exists in the case of multilingual learners, and pedagogical translanguaging places the learner at the center of the teaching and learning process and uses pre-existing knowledge as a resource” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.19 – 20).
“The notion of scaffolding comes from the socioconstructivist model of learning (Vygotsky 1978) in which learning is believed to occur in the context of social interactions in which a more knowledgeable person guides a learner’s emerging understanding. This support provided to a learner is referred to as scaffolding” (Puntambekar & Kolodner 2005, p. 188).
“But in the last few decades, the description of scaffolding has evolved to include support provided via tools, curricula, and technologies (Reiser & Tabak 2014), in addition to teachers (Martin et al. 2019; Van de Pol et al. 2014) and peers (Fernández et al. 2001; Guk & Kellogg 2007)” (Puntambekar 2022, p.452).
“Scaffolding is very important in pedagogical translanguaging not as a transition to develop proficiency in the majority language but as a way of developing the multilingual repertoire. Scaffolding in pedagogical translanguaging refers to the development of skills and strategies that enable students to use their resources as multilingual speakers” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.22).
“The concept of connected growers is used in dynamic systems theory to explain learning and development (Van Geert 1994)” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.22).
“According to Van Geert (2003), each component or the linguistic system, such as the lexicon or the syntax, is subject to growth and is called a “grower”. Growers can be connected to each other and can be in a supporting or competitive relationship, and the support or competition can be strong or weak (Van Geert 1994)” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.22).
“Cenoz and Gorter (2011), reported that learners use similar strategies in the organization of content and in the structure of compositions written in three languages. This indicates that students are developing writing skills in three languages and that these skills are connected to one another. It could be argued that the growth of skills to organize content or to structure a text in one language is connected to the development of these skills in the other two languages” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.23).
“Connected growers could exist not only at the discourse level but also in the acquisition of other language skills” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.23).
There are “different pedagogical translanguaging practices that can be regarded as strong or weak forms depending on the degree of pedagogical intervention that takes place in the process of learning and the use of two or more languages in the same class session”.
They are:
“The practice called enhancing metalinguistic awareness is the strongest and translanguaging shifts the weakest” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.30).
“Language is a tool which helps individuals to share their feelings, thoughts, ideas, etc. and thus assist them to communicate. It also helps to have an access to the worldly knowledge” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 29).
“… communication competency in a language is guided by the competency in the basic language skills. These basic skills are Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing (LSRW). To have required competency in a language, mastery in LSRW skills is a prerequisite” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 29).
“Listening and Reading are considered as receptive skills and Speaking and Writing as the productive skills. Though, the four skills are of different modes – two (listening and speaking) skills are auditory – vocal and the other two (reading and writing) are visual, these are interconnected” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 33).
“Pedagogical translanguaging in language classes can focus on different levels: phonetics, lexicon, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and discourse” (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022 p.347).
“As far as approach is concerned, pedagogical translanguaging is multilingual and heteroglossic. It views languages as dynamic and co-existing; by focusing on the whole multilingual repertoire, it looks at the activation of multiple languages, varieties, registers and other signs from multilingual speakers” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.25).
“The characteristic of pedagogical translanguaging is that it is planned and designed by the teacher as part of his/her lesson plan. It goes beyond allowing for the flexible use of languages. Pedagogical translanguaging implies a definition of the objectives for each lesson, the selection of material, and the specific didactics to carry out the learning tasks and teaching activities. One of the characteristics of pedagogical translanguaging is that it uses multilingual resources from the whole repertoire in the same lesson” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.24 – 25).
“Pedagogical translanguaging aims at the development of school languages and academic content. It supports the learning of weaker languages, which can be minority languages or languages not widely used in society, by using the multilingual speaker’s resources. The idea is to maximize the learner’s linguistic resources as a multilingual when developing language and academic subjects. Students activate prior knowledge to maximize the use of their resources as multilingual speakers. They need pedagogical translanguaging as a scaffold to become aware of those resources and activate connected growers that go across languages. In this way, they can develop metalinguistic awareness and lay the foundation for autonomous learning” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.24).
“Pedagogical translanguaging is aimed at multilingual or emergent multilingual or emergent multilingual students, that is, students who are multilingual or are in the process of becoming multilingual. The students can be speakers of a regional minority language, an immigrant minority language or a majority language” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.24).
“… pedagogical translanguaging is very broad, but it takes place in programmes that focus on activating the multilingual repertoire. These programmes can be found in the context of bilingual and multilingual education, which aims at developing language and literacy in two or more languages. The programmes can be immersion programmes, minority-language reinforcement programmes or content and language integrated programmes, among others. The key idea is that there is no replacement of one language by another and that translanguaging is not a scaffold to shift from the minority to the majority language” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.23 – 24).
“Multilingual speakers acquire and use languages while engaging in language practices in a social context. Multilingualism has a social dimension, not only a linguistic one. Multilinguals use their linguistic resources in a social context and shape this context in communicative interaction” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.16 – 17).
“Focus on multilingualism considers the multilingual speaker’s repertoire as a whole wherein the languages are connected to each other and support each other. There is a high degree of connectivity and dynamic interplay between the languages” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p. 16).
“The multilingual repertoire can be a rich resource for multilinguals because they can compare elements of their different languages at different levels (phonetic, lexical, morphosyntactic, pragmatic, discursive) and use their resources crosslinguistically. The multilingual repertoire is also a resource to face different situations in communicative interaction and to use learning and communicative strategies that are part of the multilingual speaker’s trajectory” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.15 – 16).
“Multilingual speakers use different languages depending on the context, and they can also use resources from different languages in some contexts. It can be said that multilingual speakers navigate between languages and do not use each of their languages for the same purposes in all communicative situations, in the same domains or with the same people” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.15 – 16).
“Focus on Multilingualism proposes to consider multilingual speakers as such and not as monolingual speakers of each of the languages” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.15).
“This practice is a strong form of pedagogical translanguaging because it works on reflecting on language and also because it uses two or more languages for the activities in the same class. Enhancing metalinguistic awareness practices aims to develop metalinguistic awareness by activating prior knowledge and identifying connected growers so that students can make more progress in the development of their multilingual skills. Students are asked to focus on specific aspects of the language by looking at similarities and differences in skills or language levels” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.31).
Activities:
“Enhancing metalinguistic awareness practices implies the use of the whole linguistic repertoire and can be regarded as a strong form of intervention because it focuses on language” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.31).
“The use of the whole linguistic repertoire is also a strong form of pedagogical translanguaging because it uses two or more languages for activities in the same class, but it is not as strong as enhancing metalinguistic awareness practices because the intervention does not focus on reflecting on language. Students are encouraged to use their multilingual repertoire for a pedagogical purpose in different ways” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.32).
Activities:
“This practice implies that even if there are two or more languages in the school curriculum, they are used separately in different classes. It can be regarded as a weaker form of translanguaging because there are separate instructional spaces for each language. Integrated language curriculum implies that language subjects (Spanish, English, French, etc.) are linked to one another because of similar methodological approaches and coordination among teachers. These approaches provide space for focusing on crosslinguistic similarities and differences in the individual languages. Integrated language curriculum is a translanguaging practice that targets efficient language learning through the coordination of activities in different language classes” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.32).
Activities:
“Translanguaging shifts is a term used by García et al. (2017) to refer to unplanned decisions that respond to communicative needs in the classroom” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.33).
“…students can ask to translate a word so as to understand a text. It is not included in the lesson plan and in this sense it is spontaneous translanguaging. However, the teacher could use the opportunity to add an explanation about the word and to link it to the planned syllabus, thus building bridges between spontaneous and pedagogical translanguaging” (Cenoz & Gorter 2021, p.33).
“Communication means interacting with others wherein speaking is preceded by listening. Therefore, listening skill can be considered as the foundation for communication. Listening is one of the most important language skills. For effective communication, listening effectively is a prerequisite. It serves as a basis for language acquisition and helps the learner to develop other three language skills. Listening is a process which involves hearing, understanding and judging. Listening is to draw out meaning from the utterances and messages by the speaker. It is termed as listening comprehension. The students should be taught to listen, comprehend, interpret, and evaluate ideas and information from a variety of texts, considering the purpose, messages, tone, structure etc. Listening competence has a significant effect on the cognitive development of the students because when a student listens well and understands and comprehends, it implies that the instructions in the classroom have reached the student. This also affects student’s achievement in other subjects” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 33 – 34).
Activities:
“The skills acquired in speaking do transfer to writing and reading. Moreover, speaking skill is widely used by students throughout their academic life. Once the students are out in the world of work, this skill is still more needed. Speaking skill is an important ingredient for better communication” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 34).
Activities:
“Reading is the fundamental skill upon which all formal education depends. Reading doesn’t just mean decoding the written text. It is much more than that. It is a complex mental process wherein the reader reads a text as input and comprehends and analyses the written text and the output thus is the understanding of the written text and drawing out meaning. This helps the reader to add to his/her existing knowledge. Reading skill enables a student to comprehend and gain information from the printed text. A student requires this skill throughout his academic career as well as in everyday life situation” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 35).
Activities:
“Writing system has a great contribution in the progress of human civilization. Be it sharing of information in the field of art and culture or science and technology, written texts have helped in enriching our knowledge. Written text is the basis for storage and transmission of information and knowledge. Writing as a communication tool is a mean of conveying one’s thought in the written form. The writing process involves certain linguistic skills” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 36).
“The process of written communication starts with the planning for written text which requires the thought process to work with the knowledge of certain essential literary devices” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 36).
“The different forms of written text in the modern society such as letters, articles, applications etc. require a person to have various skills and competence in writing. There is a huge production of diversified written texts in today’s world” (Lakhera & Biswal 2017, p. 37).
Activities:
“The study of how context affects meaning – for example, how the sentence It’s cold in here comes to be interpreted as “close the windows” in certain situations – is called pragmatics” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.140).
“Pragmatics is concerned with our understanding of language in context. Two kinds of contexts are relevant. The first is linguistic context – the discourse that precedes the phrase or sentence to be interpreted; the second is situational context – virtually everything nonlinguistic in the environment of the speaker” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.167).
“Words are an important part of linguistic knowledge and constitute a component of our mental grammars, but one can learn thousands of words in a language and still not know the language” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.36).
“Each word in your mental lexicon includes other information as well, such as whether it is a noun, a pronoun, a verb, and adjective, and adverb, a preposition, or a conjunction. That is, the mental lexicon also specifies the grammatical category or syntactic class of the word” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.37).
“The linguistic term for the most elemental unit of grammatical form is morpheme. The word is derived from the Greek word morphe, meaning form” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.41).
“The study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed, is morphology. This word itself consists of two morphemes, morph + ology. The suffix -ology means “science of” or “branch of knowledge concerning”. Thus, the meaning of morphology is the science of (word) forms” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.41).
“All the speakers of a language share a basic vocabulary – the sounds and meanings of morphemes and words. Each of us knows the meanings of thousand of words. This knowledge permit us to use words to express our thoughts and to understand the thoughts of others. The meaning of words is part of linguistic knowledge. Your mental storehouse of information about words and morphemes is what we have been calling the lexicon” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.153).
Activities:
Test to assess vocabulary:
“When you know a language you know the sounds of that language, and you know how to combine those sounds into words” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.189).
“Althogh languages may contain different sounds, the sounds of all the languages of the world together constitute a class of sounds that the human vocal tract is designed to make” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.186).
“The study of speech sounds is called phonetics. To describe speech sounds, it is necessary to know what an individual sound is, and how each sound differs from all others” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.190).
Activities:
“The part of grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures is called syntax” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.78).
“The rules of syntax combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences. Among other things, the rules specify the correct word order for a language” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.78).
“A second important role of the syntax is to describe the relationship between the meaning of a particular group of words and the arrangement of those words” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.78).
Activities:
“Speakers know how to combine sentences into a larger discourse to express complex thoughts and ideas. Discourse analysis is concerned with the broad speech units comprising multiple sentences. It involves questions of style, appropriateness, cohesiveness, rhetorical force, topic/subtopic structure, differences between written and spoken discourse, as well as grammatical properties” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.167).
Activities:
“The study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases and sentences is called semantics. Subfields of semantics are lexical semantics, which is concerned with the meanings of words, and the meaning relationships among words; and phrasal or sentential semantic, which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p.140).
“Morphological awareness has been related to literacy skills in educational contexts” (Leonet et al. 2020, p. 41).
“Morphological awareness includes the ability to reflect about inflection, derivation and compounding” (Leonet et al. 2020, p. 42).
“When measuring morphological awareness, Carlisle (2000) makes a distinction between creating new meanings by adding affixes to a base (farm-farmer) and decomposing tasks (farmer = farm + er) because adding affixes requires knowledge of grammatical rules while relational knowledge is enough to complete decomposing tasks” (Leonet et al. 2020, p. 42).
Leonet et al. (2020) proposed some activities focused on oral and written language:
Leonet et al. (2020) proposed a morphological awareness test:
A cognate “is a word that shares similar orthographic and semantic characteristics in two languages” (Proctor & Mo 2009, p. 126).
“Cognates are more common among languages that are typologically closer. Otwinowska (2016) explains that typologically close languages share more cognates than typologically distant languages but also that these cognates tend to be orthographically transparent because they are identical or very similar. Learners may have more problems identifying less similar cognates” (Cenoz et al. 2022, p. 2761).
Activities:
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