English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong

With the introduction of the English Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers in Hong Kong, local English teachers’ performance in the assessment has been in the spotlight. Among the five papers in the assessment, teachers’ scores for the writing paper, a composite of two tasks¾expository wri...

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Main Author: Tsang, Wai Lan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik.FSSK,UKM 2011
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/964/1/pp1_16.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/964/
http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/Gema/gemahome.html
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Institution: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Language: English
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spelling my-ukm.journal.9642016-12-14T06:28:26Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/964/ English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong Tsang, Wai Lan With the introduction of the English Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers in Hong Kong, local English teachers’ performance in the assessment has been in the spotlight. Among the five papers in the assessment, teachers’ scores for the writing paper, a composite of two tasks¾expository writing and error correction and explanation, have consistently recorded the lowest since the implementation. One recurrent comment is teachers’ insufficient understanding and use of metalinguistic terminology. It is against this background that the present study was conducted. It aimed to explore the extent to which local English teachers in primary schools were aware of English metalinguistic terms at different structural levels. 20 in-service primary English teachers participated in an English grammar metalanguage test, modelled on Andrews (1999), and their performance revealed three key patterns: (1) the lowest mean score in the explanation component, (2) recognition of examples of grammatical functions being much harder than that of grammatical forms, and (3) errors at the word level being more readily to be corrected and explained than those at the phrasal and clausal levels. Their performance also suggested one possible discrepancy between primary English teachers and the secondary counterparts, where the primary teachers were better at the lower level of metalanguage application (e.g., recognition of examples for metalinguistic terms) and the secondary teachers at higher-level applications (e.g., error correction). The paper concludes with a suggestion that systematic micro-metalinguistic input be integrated in teacher training courses and be used more actively among in-service teachers in their teaching context. Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik.FSSK,UKM 2011 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/964/1/pp1_16.pdf Tsang, Wai Lan (2011) English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 11 (1). pp. 1-16. ISSN 1675-8021 http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/Gema/gemahome.html
institution Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
building Perpustakaan Tun Sri Lanang Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
content_source UKM Journal Article Repository
url_provider http://journalarticle.ukm.my/
language English
description With the introduction of the English Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers in Hong Kong, local English teachers’ performance in the assessment has been in the spotlight. Among the five papers in the assessment, teachers’ scores for the writing paper, a composite of two tasks¾expository writing and error correction and explanation, have consistently recorded the lowest since the implementation. One recurrent comment is teachers’ insufficient understanding and use of metalinguistic terminology. It is against this background that the present study was conducted. It aimed to explore the extent to which local English teachers in primary schools were aware of English metalinguistic terms at different structural levels. 20 in-service primary English teachers participated in an English grammar metalanguage test, modelled on Andrews (1999), and their performance revealed three key patterns: (1) the lowest mean score in the explanation component, (2) recognition of examples of grammatical functions being much harder than that of grammatical forms, and (3) errors at the word level being more readily to be corrected and explained than those at the phrasal and clausal levels. Their performance also suggested one possible discrepancy between primary English teachers and the secondary counterparts, where the primary teachers were better at the lower level of metalanguage application (e.g., recognition of examples for metalinguistic terms) and the secondary teachers at higher-level applications (e.g., error correction). The paper concludes with a suggestion that systematic micro-metalinguistic input be integrated in teacher training courses and be used more actively among in-service teachers in their teaching context.
format Article
author Tsang, Wai Lan
spellingShingle Tsang, Wai Lan
English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong
author_facet Tsang, Wai Lan
author_sort Tsang, Wai Lan
title English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong
title_short English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong
title_full English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong
title_fullStr English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong
title_full_unstemmed English metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in Hong Kong
title_sort english metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in hong kong
publisher Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik.FSSK,UKM
publishDate 2011
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/964/1/pp1_16.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/964/
http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/Gema/gemahome.html
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