Theorizing and Investigating Metalinguistic Engagement in a Reading Curriculum With Multilingual Children

• In Event: Roundtable 1

Abstract

While findings at the intersection of metalinguistics and reading highlight the value of metalinguistic awareness-oriented instruction (i.e. semantics, morphology, syntax), this research mostly reports hopeful quasi-experimental outcomes (Baker et al., 2014). Examples of this research rarely recount the interactions of teachers and students during language teaching, discussion, play, and instructional application and so on. Even less frequent are qualitative accounts of the ways that teaching that targets students’ English literacy skills is responsive to children’s multilingual repertoires. This paper therefore theorizes and investigates the notion of metalinguistic engagement (ME), the classroom-related interactions where students and teachers work with and amongst each other to objectify language and heighten metalinguistic awareness, in the contexts of a dual language school.

Authors

• Renata Love Jones, Georgia State University

• Patrick Proctor, Boston College