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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 10:2 (2020) ► pp.249–289

The metalinguistic awareness of bilingual (Persian-Baluchi) and monolingual (Persian) learners of English language

| Chabahar Maritime University |
| Chabahar Maritime University |

The present study aimed to explore the metalinguistic awareness of Persian- and Persian-Baluchi-speaking students who were in the process of learning English as their second and third languages, respectively. In order to study learners’ metalinguistic awareness in error identification, correction and explanation they were asked to complete a syntactic awareness test. Findings demonstrated that Baluch respondents noted and corrected a greater proportion of grammatical errors than Persian respondents in English. Moreover, Baluch participants had a more grammar-oriented approach in correcting the errors they noted than the Persian participants, whose approaches were relatively content-oriented for some errors. As for error explanation, Baluch participants produced a greater proportion of error explanations and had a more grammar-oriented approach than did the Persian participants, however, their differences in this case were not statistically significant. These differences were observed on the dimensions that were both similar and dissimilar across the three languages (Persian, Baluchi, and English).

Keywords: metalinguistic awareness, Persian, Baluch
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Metalinguistic awareness in L2 learners
    • 1.2Metalinguistic awareness in L3 learners
    • 1.3Bilingual/Multilingual context of Iran
  • 2.The study
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Instruments
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Data analysis
  • 3.Results
    • Errors Noted
    • Errors Corrected
    • Errors Explained
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.16012.iza
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