Metalinguistic Skills of Children with Varying Language Abilities

Abstract

This study examined the differences between the performance on metalinguistic tasks between children with typical language development and those with weak language skills. Research Bilingual children will be used as a base for stronger metalinguistic abilities and I will discuss what bilingual children’s metalinguistic abilities taught researchers and how it applies to monolinguals and monolinguals with language impairment. Studies also typically use normal language acquiring monolingual children as a control group to compare to bilinguals and/or monolinguals with language impairment. Results indicate that bilinguals have the strongest metalinguistic abilities and monolinguals with language impairment the lowest. I then will include my own research done in Dr. Lizbeth Finestack’s Child Language Lab, comparing monolingual typically developing and low language skilled children between the ages of 4-8 years. This study will use a variety of examinations, looking at verbal skills, nonverbal skills, low-language skills, and metalinguistic skills. The paper concludes that monolinguals with low language skills have impaired metalinguistic skills which influences the strength of their verbal language abilities.