"Metalinguistic awareness in Italian-English and Italian-French young bilinguals: A comparison with English, French and Italian monolingual controls”.

Well-developed metalinguistic abilities in L1 at university level can be beneficial for critical learning and a strong predictor of achievement in additional languages. (Jessner, 2006, 2008). What can early bilingualism add to metalinguistic awareness at this relatively late stage with respect to monolingual development when sociocultural, educational and cognitive variables are kept constant? This paper presents two studies on metalinguistic awareness in monolinguals of different nationalities and in different types of bilinguals. In study A), a group of 20 Italian-English bilinguals was opposed to 10 English-speaking monolinguals and 10 Italian-speaking monolinguals. Study B) was based on the same research design, but the bilinguals were Italian-French, and the two monolingual controls were French and Italian. The same type of population was addressed in both cases: participants aged 20 to 30 years, middle class, involved in intellectual activities of a humanistic type. The same tests were used: a test of metalinguistic abilities for adults in three linguistic versions (English, French and Italian), a test of nonverbal intelligence for adults, the SPM38 (Raven, Raven, Court, 2003). While nonverbal intelligence scores were homogeneous in all subgroups, the two bilingual groups outperformed the corresponding monolingual controls in all metalinguistic scores. In both studies, this was particularly salient in the Acceptability subtest, which assesses the awareness of language rules. The discussion will consider educational implications for monolinguals and theoretical implications for bilingual development.