Components of Meta-linguistic Awareness in Bilingual and Monolingual Schoolchildren
Brain activity in bilinguals has been the subject of study in recent decades due to the divergence in cognitive processes and abilities that reveal an increase compared to monolinguals. The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between the components of meta-linguistic awareness in bilingual and monolingual fifth graders, whose mother tongue is Spanish (L1), and who are learning English as a foreign language (L2). A non-experimental transectional design was used in a sample of forty-five children belonging to two private schools in the city of Barranquilla, where the Tham-2 instrument was applied. Tham-2 measures meta-linguistic awareness in the correlation of the phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic components. The results obtained show significant differences between bilingual and monolingual students, identifying higher scores in meta-linguistic awareness in monolingual students.