Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Was kann Mehrsprachigkeit leisten?: Metalinguistische und strategische Prozesse in Aktion: Eine psycholinguistische Studie im Südtiroler Kontext. (German) |
| Alternate Title: |
What Potentials Can Be Unlocked Through Multilingualism?: Metalinguistic Reasoning and Strategic Processes in Action: A Psycholinguistic Study in South Tyrol. (English) |
| Authors: |
Spechtenhauser, Birgit |
| Source: |
Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik; Apr2026, Vol. 2026 Issue 84, p130-161, 32p |
| Subject Terms: |
MULTILINGUALISM, LANGUAGE awareness, DECODING algorithms, PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, SCIENCE education, LANGUAGE transfer (Language learning) |
| Geographic Terms: |
TRENTINO-Alto Adige (Italy) |
| Abstract (English): |
The article examines the metalinguistic awareness (MeLA) of multilingual learners in lower secondary education at German schools in South Tyrol and its influence on decoding and transfer strategies when dealing with an unknown language. The study shows that learners with higher MeLA competencies analyze more complex linguistic structures more consciously and make more effective use of their multilingual repertoire, leading to better decoding performance. German (L1), Italian (L2), and English (L3) were identified as the most important transfer languages, with higher MeLA scores being associated with more frequent and targeted cross-linguistic consultations. Learners with lower MeLA competencies, on the other hand, more frequently used avoidance and compensation strategies. The results emphasize the importance of promoting metalinguistic and cross-linguistic competencies in multilingual educational contexts and criticize monolingual teaching approaches that do not sufficiently take into account the multilingual potential of learners. [Extracted from the article] |
| Abstract (German): |
This paper investigates multiple language learners' metalinguistic awareness at the lower secondary level in German schools in South Tyrol and its impact on decoding and transfer strategies when confronted with an unfamiliar linguistic system. Based on findings from trilingual test procedures used to assess participants' metalinguistic competences, the study investigates the effects of different metalinguistic competence levels on such strategies. The results indicate that learners with higher metalinguistic mean scores demonstrated better decoding practices and transfer abilities, and were more frequently able to decode at a level that requires a high degree of awareness (that is, at the level of understanding) than peers with lower mean scores. High-scoring learners furthermore showed enhanced ability to analyze target structures, improved capacity for crosslinguistic consultations, and reduced reliance on avoidance strategies during the decoding process. Such findings emphasize the importance of fostering meta- and crosslinguistic competences to facilitate effective transfer strategies, which in turn have a catalytic effect on the development of the multilingual system as a whole. They also expose the need to move beyond the still prevailing notions of separate language learning processes for the learning of multiple languages and the monolingual habitus in multilingual instructional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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