The development of secondary discourse ability and metalinguistic awareness in second language learners

Abstract

Research on the development of language proficiency associated with academic discourse and literacy learning is reviewed. Bilingualism and L2 learning are considered as a point of reference to help formulate the following research questions for future investigation: What are the components that together make up literacy‐related academic proficiency? Sequential bilingualism provides for a useful perspective on this question because in L2 learning the different components appear to develop at varying rates in relation to each other, revealing imbalances that shed light on how aspects of language knowledge and information processing might be represented and on how they are deployed in actual language use. Which aspects of literacy‐related academic proficiency are not language‐specific, and how do bilinguals access requisite knowledge and processing components in L2 literacy learning?