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A growing body of literature has provided evidence of the contribution of various metalinguistic skills to children's English literacy development; however, most of the studies focused on reading outcomes while spelling outcomes have been under-researched. Further, very few studies have been conducted to investigate if the results based on native English speakers can be generalized to speakers of other languages who are learning to read and spell in English. In this study, the simultaneous influence of phonological, morphological and orthographic knowledge that may impact English spelling acquisition, among Chinese students learning English as a foreign language in Grade 8 (n = 339) in mainland China and native English-speaking students in Grade 3 (n = 166) in the United States, was investigated. Measures in English tapping into the three aspects of metalinguistic skills—phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA) and orthographic awareness (OA)—were administered to both groups. Multi-group structural equation models were used to compare models between the Chinese and the American group. Results showed that 1) the overall model of metalinguistic skills predicting spelling outcome was highly similar between the American and the Chinese groups; 2) metalinguistic skills were correlated and worked in concert to compose the linguistic repertoire construct which concurrently predicted the spelling outcome; 3) MA was the major component, compared to PA and OA, of Linguistic Repertoire (LING) across the two groups. Linguistic repertoire explained 64.1 percent and 40.2 percent of the total variance in the spelling outcome for the American and the Chinese groups, respectively; and 4) the contribution of OA was greater in the Chinese group than it was in the American group, whereas the contribution of PA was greater in the American group than it was in the Chinese group. This study highlights the important contribution of MA to literacy development among both the American students and the Chinese students. It also sheds light on the influence of first language (L1) orthography on English literacy acquisition. That OA contributed more than PA to the LING construct may reflect that the English learners with L1-Chinese background have enhanced visual-orthographic processing skills. This study challenges phase models of literacy development that claim MA only contributes to literacy acquisition late in the process and offers some empirical evidence to support the emerging "linguistic repertoire" theory of literacy development.

This article presents an analysis of German nicht...sondern... (contrastive not...but...) which departs from the commonly held view that this construction should be explained by appeal to its alleged corrective function. It will be demonstrated that in nicht A sondern B (not A but B), A and B just behave like stand-alone unmarked answers to a common question Q, and that this property of sondern is presuppositional in character. It is shown that from this general observation many interesting properties of nicht...sondern... follow, among them distributional differences between German 'sondern' and German 'aber' (contrastive but, concessive but), intonational requirements and exhaustivity effects. sondern's presupposition is furthermore argued to be the result of the conventionalization of conversational implicatures.

Developmental dyslexia is widely believed to be caused either mainly or in part by an impairment of phonological representations. Although this hypothesis predicts that individuals with dyslexia should show deficits in tasks which require the use of implicit phonological knowledge, this has not yet been directly tested, as the evidence cited in support of this hypothesis usually comes from metalinguistic tasks which demand explicit awareness of phonological units. Additionally, since the ability to perform metalinguistic tasks which involve phonological segments can be enhanced by an individual’s competence in alphabetic literacy, the possibility remains that phonological skills may have been inadequately isolated from the influences of literacy acquisition in many cases. The study reported in this thesis investigated both the representations and the metalinguistic skills of a group of adults with a history of developmental dyslexia, examining areas of phonology which do and do not have orthographic counterparts. To isolate phonological skills from orthographic skills, the representations of conventional segmental contrasts (e.g. /k/ vs /g/) were compared with the representation of suprasegmental contrasts (as seen in minimal pairs such as ′toy factory and toy ′factory), which have no orthographic counterpart. Basic metalinguistic skills were tested by means of a phonological awareness task targeting both segmental and suprasegmental units, and phonological manipulation skills were tested using a Pig Latin task and a Spoonerism task, where participants were required to manipulate both segmental and suprasegmental units (e.g. extracting the segment /b/ from consonant clusters and the main stress from SWW or WSW stress patterns). The results showed that although the performance of the dyslexic group was weaker than that of the control group when tasks required the manipulation of either the segmental or suprasegmental components of words, no evidence was found for a deficit in the tasks which drew on implicit representations or basic metalinguistic skills. These findings suggest that the phonological deficit in dyslexia may be restricted to the ability to manipulate phonological units rather than in the representation of them per se.

This thesis examines how students, aged 13-15, with a mother tongue other than Swedish, experience learning English in school. This is important since there is an increasing number of bilinguals and multilinguals learning English in schools in Sweden and around the world. Several concepts are presented and discussed that have been argued to pose barriers to bilingual and multilingual language learning. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with ten students, aged between 13 and 15. The empirical material shows that bilingual and multilingual students usually refer to Swedish, even when their mother-tongue may be a better reference for learning English. This is because teachers commonly refer to Swedish grammar rules in attempting to clarify English grammar rules and the textbooks used to support the learning process are in Swedish. This may pose problems for the learning process, particularly for students who are not proficient in Swedish. The study also highlights the importance of diagnosing bilingual students' L1 and L2 on a regular basis to see when the optimum time is to be exposed to English language learning rather than the current approach of immersing them in English learning without considering the other language learning processes the student may be engaged in. The study also found that students commonly perceived their English to be proficient even though they had poor grades. One possible reason for this is that they manage well in their day-to-day engagement with computer games, films and social media while formal English learning, including aspects such as grammar and writing, require a different type of application. Finally, the thesis describes how important high metalinguistic awareness is for language learning and it is suggested that additional research focuses on how this conceptual understanding can be translated in practitioner tools useful for teachers. Schools need to create an environment that values and supports multilingual students’ language competence and an early national diagnostic test would help to support those conditions.

One of the most controversial topics in Applied Linguistics is the role of learners' metalinguistic knowledge (MK) in second language (L2) learning and teaching. There seems to be no agreement between those who propose that MK is essential for L2 learning and those who believe that it can even be detrimental for L2 acquisition.Additionally, the subjunctive has been reported to be one of the most difficult structures to master for L2 learners of Spanish. It has been suggested that the subjunctive is acquired fairly late in an acquisition hierarchy of Spanish grammar and that, as a consequence, learners must reach a stage where they can produce syntactically sophisticated utterances in order to be "ready" for acquisition.Taking an Information Processing (IP) approach to language learning as a framework, this dissertation investigates the relationship between MK and grammatical accuracy by learners of Spanish at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency. Their MK is assessed through a set of terminology and grammaticality judgment tasks. Their mastery of the Spanish subjunctive is evaluated through a set of receptive and productive tests involving different subordinate clauses.The three groups of participants are compared with respect to their MK and their mastery of the subjunctive, and it is examined whether MK correlates with mastery of the subjunctive. Findings include: 1) an improvement on both subjunctive accuracy and terminology knowledge across levels; 2) a positive correlation between English MK and Spanish MK; 3) a positive correlation between MK and accuracy in the use of the subjunctive; and 4) agreement between the learners' acquisition hierarchy within the subjunctive and teaching order of subjunctive substructures.The findings show that MK has a positive impact on the mastery of this "difficult" structure. They are also consistent with other experimental studies that suggest that explicit instruction has a positive impact on L2 learning. The late and uneven acquisition of the subjunctive demonstrated by the subjects in this study also suports the hypothesis that there are "many subjunctives" to learn and that learners will not acquire this structure until they are developmentally ready (third year of instruction).

Through the use of action research methodology, this exploratory study examines the relationship between explicit grammar teaching and the development of year 8 students’ metalinguistic knowledge. The research particularly focuses on exploring the transfer of new grammatical knowledge into the students’ own writing, as well as charting their abilities to articulate the design decisions underpinning their linguistic choices. Throughout the research, students were encouraged to employ a range of supportive self-regulation strategies to meet the cognitive demands of writing. The research was conducted over one academic year and involved three different teaching and reflection cycles. Three students, with differing attainment levels, were selected at the start of the research process to be case studies. Their written work was analysed at five different points during the year: a pre-test writing assessment; a post teaching test assessment and after each of the three teaching cycles. Students were also encouraged to write reflective commentaries outlining their linguistic and grammatical choices. These data sets were complemented by the addition of case study participant interviews which were conducted within a few weeks of completing their written assessments. Both the commentaries and interviews were used to elicit students’ metalinguistic reflections regarding their written texts and the writing process as a whole. This data was inductively coded and analysed in order to identify patterns in students’ reflections. The findings are presented in case study form, highlighting individual student’s transfer and articulation of their new grammatical knowledge. This study reinforces recent research into the complexities associated with bridging the gap between grammar transfer and grammar articulation and therefore contributes to the growing body of research in this area.

Metalinguistic awareness skills (i.e., phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, morphological awareness) contribute to children’s spelling as well as reading. Although the multidimensional nature of these metalinguistic awareness skills has been acknowledged, little research has been conducted on the simultaneous investigation of these three metalinguistic skills, and it is especially true for Korean Hangul. The purpose of this study was to simultaneously examine these three inter-related constructs and the unique and shared contributions of each construct to English spelling as well as Korean spelling of typically developing fourth, fifth and sixth grade Korean-speaking students (n= 287). Korean metalinguistic awareness skills represented by three-first order factors (i.e., phonological, orthographic, morphological awareness) predicted 83% of the total variance in Korean spelling, and 52% of the total variance in English Word Spelling. It was particularly noteworthy that Korean metalinguistic awareness skills determined 12% of the variance in English Word Spelling, even after controlling for English vocabulary, demonstrating that there was a transfer effect between the two different orthographies. Findings from the present study provide strong support for the relationships between first language and second language literacy skills in terms of spelling and the concrete relationship between morphological awareness and spelling.

The present paper aims at disclosing what metalinguistic elements of language are used in dialogues and what are the intended meanings expressed by speakers using particular metalinguistic elements. The purpose of the research was to disclose how the metalinguistic elements of language add to the formation of a successful communicative act.The main objectives of the research were to analyse what the speaker intends to say in a communicative act by using certain words in a particular situation, and to reveal how the speaker produces a logical utterance using particular metalinguistic elements. The method used in the research was content analysis. The use of metalinguistic elements highly depends on the context of the situation and the relations between the speakers. The results of the research proved the hypothesis that metalinguistic elements of language are usually used in dialogues as only using these language elements the speaker can achieve the main aim of a communicative act,i.e. express his/her attitudes, opinions and feelings. The research proved that metalinguistic elements used in dialogues make a communicative act sound natural and lively.The use of metalinguistic elements also assures the logical sequence of a conversation. / Šis darbas siekia atskleisti kokie metalingvistiniai elementai dažniausiai naudojami dialoguose ir kokias reikšmes kalbėtojai perduoda klausytojams vartodami tam tikrus metalingvistinius elementus. Pagrindinis tyrimo tikslas buvo išsiaiškinti kaip metalingvistiniai elementai prisideda prie komunikatyvinio akto sėkmingo sukūrimo.Pagrindiniai darbo uždaviniai buvo atskleisti ką kalbantysis nori pasakyti kalbėjimo akte vartodamas tam tikrus žodžius tam tikroje situacijoje ir atskleisti kaip kalbantysis sukuria aiškų, logišką ir tikslų pasakymą vartodamas kalboje metalingvistinius elementus. Pagrindinis metodas naudojamas šiame darbe buvo turinio analizė. Metalingvistinių elementų vartojimas priklauso nuo pokalbio situacijos ir santykių tarp pokalbio dalyvių. Rezultatai gauti tyrimo metu patvirtino hipotezę kad metalingvistiniai elementai yra dažniausiai vartojami dialoge, nes tik vartodamas šiuos elementus kalbėtojas gali pasiekti pagrindinį komunikacijos tikslą- išreikšti savo nuomonę, mintis ir jausmus tam tikrų dalykų ar žmonių atžvilgiu. Tyrimas parodė, kad metalingvistiniai elementai, vartojami dialoguose suteikia komunikacijai gyvumo ir natūralumo, be šių elementų pokalbis nebūtų vaizdingas, nes kalbėtojui būtų sunkiau išreikšti savo jausmus,nuomonę ir požiūrius į tam tikrus dalykus.Metalingvistiniai elementai taip pat užtikrina logišką, rišlią pokalbio seką ir vystymą, kurie leidžia pokalbio dalyviams lengvai įsitraukti į pokalbį ir jį tęsti bei plėtoti.