CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 276Language Development and DisordersNeurobiology of Language and BilingualismEFL/ESL Teaching and Learning

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The effects of learning two languages on levels of metalinguistic awareness

Galambos, Sylvia Joseph, Goldin-Meadow, Susan·1990·Cognition
DOI 10.1016/0010-0277(90)90030-n
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a bilingual environment-the juxtaposition of two language systems learned simultaneously-enhances children's awareness of the language(s) they are learning to speak. The study explores the development of metalinguistic awareness at three different levels of explicit knowledge about language in monolingual children, and assesses the effects of a bilingual experience on this developmental process. To observe the development of metalinguistic awareness and to test the bilingual hypothesis, we compared metalinguistic skills in 32 Spanish-speaking and 32 English-speaking monolinguals and in 32 Spanish-English bilinguals aged 4:5 to 8:0. The Spanish and English metalinguistic tests each contained 15 different ungrammatical constructions (e.g., "Steven and Robert is a brother") and 15 grammatically correct "fillers." For each item, the children were asked in the appropriate language to note whether the construction was correct or incorrect, to correct the errors they noted, and to explain why those errors were wrong. We found that the monolingual children followed the same sequence in acquiring the ability to detect, to correct, and to explain grammatical errors; in particular, they progressed from a content-based orientation to a form-based orientation to language at each of the three levels. However, we noted different outcomes in terms of the types of grammatical constructions that were easy for monolinguals to master at each level-the constructions that were easy to detect and correct were distinct from those that were easy to explain. The bilingual experience was found to speed the transition from a content-based to a form-based approach to language at certain levels of awareness (detection and correction), but had less of an effect on explanations. Moreover, the bilingual experience did not appear to affect the types of grammatical constructions that were easy to master at any of the three levels. These data suggest that the experience of learning two languages hastens the development of certain metalinguistic skills in young children, but does not alter the course of that development. Thus, while learning two languages may enhance a speaker's "ear" for regularities of form, it does not appear to augment his grammatical "mind" for understanding those regularities.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/0010-0277(90)90030-n

Cites

59 of 59 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 60 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Killey, 1980, Good-poor readers differences in detecting, pinpointing and correcting errors in orally presented sentences
  2. Ryan, 1979, Grammaticality judgments, sentence repetitions, and sentence corrections by children learning to read, International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 6, 23

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–273 of 273

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Galambos, S. J., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
Affiliations
Yale University (US)
Corresponding author
Galambos, Sylvia Joseph
Venue
Cognition
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
1990-01
Volume
34
Issue
1
Pages
1-56
ISSN
0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/0010-0277(90)90030-n
OpenAlex
W2021609983
Cited by
276
References
60
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 16
FWCI
2.78
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Cognition (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (5t32mh016127-07)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (MH16127)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
Keywords
metalinguistic awareness, bilingualism, second language acquisition, grammatical error detection, error correction, error explanation, Spanish-English bilinguals, monolingual children, language development
MeSH terms
Awareness, Child, Child, Preschool, Cognition, Connecticut, El Salvador, Female, Humans, Language, Language Development, Linguistics, Male, United States

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review