While metalinguistic awareness (MLA) has been shown to play a crucial role in second and third language acquisition, a variety of methodological approaches point to the difficulty of operationalising the concept. The present study provides a critical analysis of MLA in relation to its measurement by means of a French-language test of…

Native and nonnative speakers of English listened to a nonnative speaker's reading of well-formed sentences and those containing grammatical errors of three types. Identified errors were judged for gravity on a 5-point scale. In a second experiment, subjects identified error types and rated them for gravity and annoyance in an aural task; they…