Subject-specific and task-specific characteristics of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children

Abstract

AbstractThe relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness was explored in Puerto Rican Spanish- and English-speaking children. All subjects were from low-income backgrounds and were enrolled in a transitional bilingual education program in the United States. Two longitudinal studies were conducted. The first study examined the abilities to note and correct ungrammatical sentences in Spanish. Subjects were 104 children in first and second grade at the beginning of the study. They were followed over a period of 2 years. The second study looked at the ability to detect ambiguity in sentences, and to paraphrase the different meanings. There were 107 subjects who were in fourth and fifth grades, and were also followed over a 2-year period. The results from both studies indicated that native language proficiency as well as the degree of bilingualism affected metalinguistic awareness. The results also indicated that these effects interacted with the types of items in the metalinguistic tasks. This suggests that both subject-specific and task-specific factors are important in understanding the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness.