Representations as Metalinguistic Macro-Awareness: An Experiment on 11–12 Years Old Greek Students within the Framework of Pluralistic Approaches

Abstract

Summary In order to transition from a monolingual foreign language course to a multilingual one, all the elements that are connected to students’ cognition should be taken into consideration in order to facilitate this shift. Working with classes of French as a Foreign Language involving 11–12 years old Greek students, our study revealed that by switching to multilingual teaching, students’ representations of language(s) start to emerge; these representations had in most cases been hidden, incoherent and fossilized in teaching monolingual classes. While considering metalinguistic awareness, a variable that is central to our research, as a prerequisite for resolving problems emerging in a multilingual educational context, this article seeks to show that the representations language learners make of themselves and their learning constitute metalinguistic reflection at a macro level, which may influence how metalinguistic awareness functions when performing multilingual tasks. This paper focuses on the processing of qualitative data: meta-discourse analysis of the learners participating in our study led us to establish a typology of representations that enabled us to highlight what aspects to focus on in the classroom so as to prepare students to reflect on language more intensively. This involved guiding learners towards modifying their representational framework, by addressing deficiencies and correcting their representations characterized as “unproductive”, in order to take full advantage of multilingual teaching/learning situations.