This presentation will consider the role of metalinguistic understanding in developing school writers’ explicit knowledge of how language choices shape meaning in writing. Drawing on research evidence, the paper will argue for the importance of helping developing writers to become metalinguistically aware, and increasingly assured in writerly decision-making.
The explicit teaching of grammar in L1 has a chequered and contested history, with few theorised and evidenced arguments for its role in the curriculum. This paper will focus on the link between explicit grammar teaching and the development of metalinguistic understanding for writing. Specifically, this presentation will consider the role of metalinguistic understanding at the lexical, syntactical and textual level in developing school writers' explicit knowledge of how language choices shape meaning in writing. This paper draws on a cumulative set of studies, using a range of methodologies including experimental, randomised controlled trials and qualitative studies, and exploring the relationship between explicit teaching of grammar, students' metalinguistic understanding, and their writing outcomes. It will argue for the importance of helping developing writers to become metalinguistically aware, and increasingly assured in writerly decision-making.
Theoretically, we adopt a socio-cultural view of grammar, as espoused by Halliday, in which the emphasis is on the functional of language, in context, not on the form. In this way, 'grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning - it is a semanticky kind of grammar' (Halliday and Mathiessen 2004:49). Therefore, in the light of this, we argue that grammar and its conceptual terminology are resources to highlight the possibilities of language choice in shaping meanings in written text, a way of helping young writers in 'learning how to mean'. Moreover, in learning how to mean, we are developing young writers' metalinguistic understanding about writing, writerly choices, and agency as writers.
Pedagogically, metalinguistic talk in the classroom allows language to be used for cognitive purposes, opening up thinking space for 'deeper level of attention' to the relationship 'between meaning, form and function' (Storch 2008) and making thinking visible through verbalisation. The data also show the close relationship between teachers' management of metalinguistic talk and students' capacity to express metalinguistic reflection, underlining the importance of metalinguistically-discursive writing classrooms.
