Metalinguistic awareness and teacher explanation

Abstract

In Hong Kong in the past five years, there has been a marked increase of interest in the language awareness of teachers (their ‘metalinguistic awareness’). This interest has been stimulated partly by a concern about declining standards of student achievement in both Chinese and English. Dissatisfaction with learners’ standards of English is linked to officially expressed concern about the quality of teachers of English, many of whom are neither subject-trained nor professionally trained. The present study is part of on-going research into the metalinguistic awareness of Hong Kong secondary school teachers of English. One observable behaviour most obviously exemplifying the metalinguistic awareness of L2 teachers is explaining grammar. The aim of this particular study was to explore the relationship between a teacher’s metalinguistic awareness and her ability to explain a grammar point: how might the latter be affected by the former, and what might the latter reveal about the former? A number of teachers with different backgrounds and experience were asked to role-play the explanation of a grammar point on two separate occasions. The explanations were video-taped, transcribed and analysed. The paper reports the results of the analysis of four samples of performance.