Investigating the Relationship between Metalinguistic Knowledge and L2 writing among Intermediate-level adult Turkish EFL Learners

Abstract

The present study investigates the nature of metalinguistic knowledge among intermediate-level adult Turkish EFL learners, and the relationship between their metalinguistic knowledge and L2 writing in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency. The participants of the present study are a total of 78 intermediate-level adult Turkish EFL learners. The data collection instruments of the present study include Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT), Productive Metalinguistic Knowledge Test (PMKT), Receptive Metalinguistic Knowledge Test (RMKT) (adapted from Ellis, 2009) and opinion essays of a smaller group of the participants. The results revealed that intermediate-level adult Turkish EFL learners have moderate to high productive and metalinguistic knowledge. They are better at explaining why a L2 sentence is grammatically incorrect than referring to the exact grammar rule and using technical words for the grammatical features. The results also revealed that there is significant moderate correlation between metalinguistic knowledge and writing accuracy.

Role of Morphological and Metalinguistic Awareness on Reading among Turkish EFL Learners

“…According to the results of this comparative study conducted with 15 monolingual and 15 Turkish L2 users, L2 learning has an effect on L1 of L2 users and L2 users have higher awareness of grammar (Atar, 2018). Besides, Aydın (2018) examined the relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and L2 achievement of Turkish EFL students. According to the results of the study using the two-part Metalinguistic Knowledge Test (MKT), L2 metalinguistic knowledge was found to be weak among intermediate-level Turkish EFL students.…”

“…According to the results of the study using the two-part Metalinguistic Knowledge Test (MKT), L2 metalinguistic knowledge was found to be weak among intermediate-level Turkish EFL students. Therefore, some suggestions are made considering that metalinguistic knowledge is beneficial for second language acquisition (Aydın, 2018). Çandarlı (2018) who claims that metalinguistic knowledge has a significant effect on second language writing skills, examines the metalinguistic knowledge about the words and sentences used by the freshmen who are learning English as L2.…”

“…The present study investigates the effect of morphological and metalinguistic awareness treatment on reading comprehension of second language learners. In this aspect, limited studies investigate Turkish EFL learners' morphological and metalinguistic awareness (Atar, 2018;Aydın, 2018;Aydın & Yıldırım, 2017;Çandarlı, 2018;Varışoğlu, 2018) after a longitudinal treatment period (Akbulut, 2017). Even in these limited studies considering morphological awareness and instruction, the effects of instruction on reading and reading comprehension have not been considered yet.…”

High School Students’ Foreign Language Acquisition and Their English Achievement

“…Many previous studies have examined the effect of age on foreign language acquisition. However, most of them focus more on the categories of children or adults (Anil, 2015;Aydın, 2018;Liu, 2009;Paepe et al, 2018;Rodriguez-Tamayo & Tenjo-Macias, 2019). Rarely there are studies that examine how teenagers learn English and the results they should have obtained at that age.…”

Stress patterns and metalinguistic knowledge before and after praxis intervention on the pronunciation of English derivational suffixed words by Thai learners

“…Metalinguistic skills are suggested and promoted in the classroom through explicit teaching as they can create awareness of the linguistic rules and facilitate the ability to monitor, notice, explain, and correct the errors made by language learners. With metalinguistic knowledge and skills, language learners can improve their ability and achieve target language competence more effectively (Alipour, 2014;Aydin, 2018;Ellis, 2016;Kim, 2018;Kuo et al, 2017;Nazarian and Izadpanah, 2017;Tokunaga, 2014) According to some research studies on metalinguistic knowledge, such metalinguistic knowledge can be obtained from language learners' verbal explanation either in written or spoken form (Isarankura, 2008;Ngarmwirojkit, 2012).…”