Formal and informal metalanguage in primary teachers’ talk about informational student texts

Jenny W Folkeryd,Åsa Af Geijerstam

doi:10.23865/njlr.v5.2020

Abstract

Previous research has pointed out the importance for teachers as well as students to use metalanguage in order to develop writing in school. Few studies have however focused on how teachers talk about content aspects in young students’ informational texts, using formal (technical) as well as informal (non-technical) metalanguage. The main purpose of the present study is therefore to analyze how primary teachers discuss student texts before and after a series of six professional development workshops. Based on research within a social semiotic perspective, the workshops focused linguistic resources to express and develop ideas, create cohesive texts and interact with an audience. During audio recorded discussions, a group of teachers were asked to comment on strengths and weaknesses in two informational texts written by students in grades 2 and 3. In order to investigate the effect of the subsequent training, the same texts were discussed during the first and the last meeting. The analysis shows no difference in the total number of metalinguistic comments before and after the workshops. However, explicit formal metalanguage replaces informal metalanguage to a significant degree. It is also shown that the informal metalanguage to some extent displayed other affordances than the formal metalanguage.

Highlights

In the last forty to fifty years, research has been performed, and dynamic discussions have taken place, in the field of L1-education in many countries
Design of the study In order to find out more about how teachers talk about content, structure and form issues with formal as well as informal metalanguage, the study was designed as an exploratory study using teachers’ text discussions before and after professional development workshops as comparison points
The teachers did not talk more about the linguistic resources used in the student texts after the workshops

Summary

Introduction

In the last forty to fifty years, research has been performed, and dynamic discussions have taken place, in the field of L1-education in many countries. In discussions on the development of writing and linguistic understanding in school, previous research has pointed out the importance for teachers as well as students to use metalanguage. Af Geijerstam to analyze, discuss and assess aspects of form as well as content in different text types (Gebhard, Chen & Britton, 2014; Macken-Horarik, Sandiford, Love & Unsworth, 2015; Myhill & Newman, 2016; Schleppegrell, 2013). Chen and Myhill (2016) argue that language to talk about language and the process of concept formation (in this case the formation of a formal metalanguage) is a premise for developing metalinguistic understanding. Previous research on, and assessment of, early reading and writing development has to a large extent focused on formal aspects of reading and writing, such as code breaking and spelling (Skoog, 2012). In a Swedish context, neither in teaching practices, nor in the curriculum, have aspects of how linguistic resources are used to create content been stressed to the same extent (Liberg et al, 2012)

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