The Relationship between Metalinguistic Understanding, Student Writing and Teaching

Explicit grammatical knowledge is often referred to as metalinguistic knowledge, which can be brought into conscious awareness and verbalised. Theoretical studies distinguish between explicit and implicit; declarative and procedural knowledge (Gombert, 1992); and between the ability to analyse language and to control it (Bialystok, 1994), and conceive of these as significant in metalinguistic development. Yet, little is known about how school-aged learners develop metalinguistic understanding, and what facilitates transfer into “enabling tools” for writing (Myhill, 2005, p.89). This paper presents findings from a nationally-funded longitudinal study, conducted in two primary schools and two secondary schools in South West England over three years, investigating development in metalinguistic understanding and its relationship to development in writing, and the influence of teaching. A broad set of qualitative data was collected: observations of writing lessons; writing samples, and writing conversations with focus students in each class. These probed students’ ability to talk explicitly about language choices, including the use of grammatical metalanguage, and their “applied” understanding of how grammar constructions can create particular effects. Data analysis illustrates: * University of Exeter, UK. E-mail: H.E.Lines@exeter.ac.uk ** University of Exeter, UK. E-mail: D.A.Myhill@exeter.ac.uk *** University of Exeter, UK. E-mail: Susan.M.Jones@exeter.ac.uk 114 | Helen Lines, Debra Myhil l & Susan Jones · how some students can explicitly articulate choices about their writing following explicit teaching of a grammar point; · how some students are able to use grammatical structures in their writing but struggle to articulate understanding; · how a teacher’s pedagogical actions are significant in developing or constraining students’ metalinguistic knowledge of writing. The study signals the significance of appropriate metalinguistic pedagogical interventions in developing students’ metalinguistic understanding of writing and provides important insights into the relationship between declarative and procedural knowledge.