Metalinguistic skills in children: What develops?

The aim of this study is to test developmental changes in metalinguistic skills in primary school children, using the distinction proposed by Bialystock (1986) between «analyzed know-ledgee and «executive control», as two components of metalinguistic awareness involved in different tasks. 60 first, second and third grade children were individually interviewed on two tasks. In the first task (guided word substitution) children were asked to substitute an underlined word with five alternatives, thus producing new sentences to be judged on their semantic and/or morph o-syntactical acceptability. In the second task (free word substitution), children have to find out the word that can be cancelled and substituted with a new one. In both tasks children have to express an acceptability judgement, giving reasons for it. Each subject receives two scores for each task. Results from two-way Anova show that the «control» component does not change much, while the «analyzed knowledge» changes significantly, although also third grade children are more aware of semantic than of morpho-syntactic features of language. © 1989, Taylor and Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.