The pilot studies on the MKT-2 (Metalinguistischer Kompetenztest Teil 2, Jessner, Hofer, & Pinto 2015) and the MKT-3 (Metalinguistischer Kompetenztest Teil 3, Jessner, Pellegrini, Moroder, Hofer, & Pinto 2015)

This article presents the results of the pilot studies conducted on the MKT-2 (Metalinguistischer Kompetenz Test Teil 2 for subjects 9-14) and the MKT-3 (Metalinguistischer Kompetenztest Teil 3, for late adolescence-adulthood), two tests translated from the original Italian metalinguistic ability test TAM-2 (Pinto, Candilera, & Iliceto 2003) and TAM-3 (Pinto, Iliceto 2007) into German. As these German versions were, after a lenghty translation process, administered for the first time to native speakers of German, (Jessner, Hofer, Pellegrini, & Pinto 2015), it was particularly significant to test their impact on German-speaking subjects. The pilot studies were conducted in three small centers of South Tyrol (North of Italy) on native speakers of German. Performances were measured by descriptive and inferential statistics indicators, and by comparison with the normative samples of the Italian TAM-2 and TAM-3. Results showed that both German pilot samples attained good metalinguistic performances at the implicit level, as measured by the L scores of each test, and in line with the Italian normative samples at the corresponding ages, and also at the explicit level, as measured by the ML scores of these tests, which were even superior to those of the Italian subjects. In either MKT-2 and MKT-3, Skewness and Kurtosis values were within range, reliability coefficients ranged from average to high, intercorrelations ranged from moderate to strong, and by means of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a major component was extracted, that represents the metalinguistic core of the test, as measured by the ML subtests. These preliminary results encourage to further systematic validation studies on both MKT-2 and MKT-3.