Metalanguage Awareness and Non-native Pre/in Service Teachers’ Explicit Knowledge of Grammar

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning area of inquiry in teacher language education and a long-term development of teachers through proper training programs. With the emergence of the language awareness movement, teacher education has even experienced a renewed focus to create opportunities for a more metalinguistically aware teacher. Accordingly, the present study sought to investigate the effects of teacher metalanguage awareness on their grammatical knowledge among non-native pre-service and in-service novice teachers. The study employed two experimental and two control groups of pre/in-service teachers. Following a pre-test, the novice teacher trainees underwent six sessions of explicit instruction on grammar along with metalanguage awareness activities. Employing multiple-choice items, the researchers administered a posttest to investigate the effect of metalanguage awareness among the four groups. The findings revealed significant differences between the pre-service and in-service teacher trainees with respect to their performance on the tests. The findings suggest that teacher metalanguage awareness can be activated and fostered through explicit instruction, and its incorporation in teacher development programs should be considered as a principle goal.

Keywords:

metalanguage awareness , pre/in-service teachers , explicit grammar knowledge , teacher development