How French speakers reflect on their language: a critical look at the concept of metalinguistic awareness

While metalinguistic awareness (MLA) has been shown to play a crucial role in second and third language acquisition, a variety of methodological approaches point to the difficulty of operationalising the concept. The present study provides a critical analysis of MLA in relation to its measurement by means of a French-language test of metalinguistic ability. In this article, the results on the Test d’Habiletés Métalinguistiques (THAM-3) completed by 66 francophone college students in Québec are interpreted with reference to the notions of noticing and understanding. Nearly a third of the participants reached the highest level of metalinguistic analysis in the metasemantic section of the test, as opposed to only 5% in the metagrammatical part. An analysis of the coding procedures suggests that this tendency may be related to the fact that explicit reference to grammatical categories was required to attain maximal scores in the metagrammatical section, whereas metalinguistic terminology was not necessary to perform at this level in the metasemantic section. This critical view of the coding procedures used on the THAM-3 points to the need to re-evaluate the role of explicit knowledge of grammatical concepts and metalanguage in the measurement of MLA.