Development in Metalinguistic Understanding and its relationship to development in writing.

在国内和国际对学校考试和工作场所写作标准的关注的背景下，迫切需要对学生成为有能力的、自主的作家的方式有更深入的了解。许多研究都强调了元认知和自我调节在写作中的重要性，表明写作不仅仅是关于生产，还涉及选择和控制。元语言理解（关于语言的知识）是这种控制的一个元素，然而我们对它是如何发展的以及它是如何支持写作发展的知之甚少。因此，本研究旨在探讨元语言理解与写作发展之间的关系；换句话说，学生们越来越能够表达出什么样的元语言理解，以及他们越来越能够在写作中展示出什么样的元语言理解。在这样做的过程中，它汇集了两个互补的研究股在写作。首先，本文旨在了解9 - 14岁青少年作家的元语言理解是如何发展的。现有的元语言理解研究并没有在老年作家的背景下考虑到这一点，而是关注早期写作、口语发展和双语学习者。因此，我们对中期元语言发展的轨迹没有经验证明的理解。与此同时，我们对元语言发展与写作发展之间的关系了解有限。一般来说，有一种假设认为元语言发展先于语言表现，但在写作的背景下，重要的是要询问更大的元语言理解是否会导致写作表现的提高，或者写作表现是否会先于或实际上塑造元语言发展。Gombert（1992）试探性地提出陈述性知识（能够清晰表达关于写作的元语言理解）先于程序性知识（能够将元语言知识转化为写作）。本研究将通过考察陈述性元语言知识和程序性元语言知识的相互关系，以及元语言理解与写作表现的相互关系来弥补这些研究空白。其次，本研究将试图了解与写作相关的明确语法教学如何促进元语言理解，以及它是否支持元语言理解的产生，从而提高写作水平。这将包括探索语法元语言在增强或限制元语言知识方面的作用。从理论上讲，课程强调语法教学是基于这样一个假设，即显性教学可以提高元语言理解，而元语言理解反过来又可以提高写作表现。尽管关于语法在语言课程中的地位存在长期而激烈的争论，但这种因果轨迹从未得到过强有力的研究（Locke 2010）。拟议中的研究是一项涉及英国和澳大利亚的合作、比较研究。在英国，自1989年国家英语课程成立以来，语法在名义上一直是国家英语课程的一部分，在1998-2011年的国家战略中特别强调“写作语法”。相比之下，澳大利亚刚刚推出了第一个国家课程，重点放在语法上。投标是联合制定的，澳大利亚团队向ARC提交了一份类似的投标，为澳大利亚部分提供资金。作为比较研究的一部分或作为一个独立的国家项目，这里的提案被设计成具有智力和方法上的一致性，以减轻澳大利亚申办失败的风险。

In the context of national and international concerns about standards in writing, both in school examinations and in the workplace, there is a pressing need for more informed understanding of the ways in which students become competent, autonomous writers. Many studies have emphasised the importance of metacognition and self-regulation in writing, signalling that writing is not simply about production, but also about choice and control. Metalinguistic understanding (knowledge about language) is one element of this control, yet we know surprisingly little about how this develops or how it supports writing development. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the relationship between metalinguistic understanding and development in writing; in other words, what metalinguistic understanding are students increasingly able to articulate and what are they increasingly able to demonstrate in their writing. In doing so, it brings together two complementary strands of research in writing. Firstly, it sets out to generate understanding of how young writers' metalinguistic understanding develops between the ages of 9 and 14. Existing research on metalinguistic understanding has not considered this in the context of older writers, focusing instead on early years' writing, on oral development, and on bilingual learners. Thus, we have no empirically evidenced understanding of trajectories of metalinguistic development in the middle years. At the same time, we have only limited understanding of the relationship between metalinguistic development and writing development. In general, there is an assumption that metalinguistic development precedes language performance, but in the context of writing, it is important to interrogate whether greater metalinguistic understanding leads to improved writing performance, or whether writing performance marches ahead of, or indeed shapes, metalinguistic development. Gombert (1992) suggests tentatively that declarative knowledge (being able to articulate metalinguistic understanding about writing) precedes procedural knowledge (being able to transfer metalinguistic knowledge into writing). This study will address these gaps in the research through examining the inter-relationship of declarative metalinguistic knowledge and procedural metalinguistic knowledge, and the inter-relationship of metalinguistic understanding and writing performance.Secondly, the study will seek to understand how the explicit teaching of grammar, relevant to the writing being taught, fosters metalinguistic understanding, and whether it supports the generation of metalinguistic understanding which leads to improvement in writing. This will include exploring the role of grammatical metalanguage in enhancing or constraining metalinguistic knowledge. Curricular emphases on teaching grammar are theoretically predicated upon an assumption that explicit teaching leads to increased metalinguistic understanding, which in turn is realized in improved writing performance. This causal trajectory has never been robustly researched, despite the prolonged and heavily contested debate about the place of grammar in the language curriculum (Locke 2010).The proposed study is a collaborative, comparative study involving England and Australia. In England, grammar has notionally been a part of the National Curriculum for English since its inception in 1989, with particular emphasis given to 'grammar for writing' in the National Strategies from 1998-2011. In contrast, Australia is just introducing its first National Curriculum, with a parallel focus on grammar. The bid has been developed jointly and a parallel bid to this submitted to the ARC by the Australian team to fund the Australian element. The proposal here has been designed to have intellectual and methodological coherence both as part of a comparative study or as an independent national project, to mitigate against the risk of the Australian bid being unsuccessful.