Developing metalinguistic awareness through pedagogicaltranslanguaging: an introspective study in the BasqueCountry

This study explored how a pedagogical intervention based on CoreAcademic Language Skills (CALS) and pedagogical translanguaginginfluences metalinguistic awareness development in the first gradeof secondary education. The research involved multilingualstudents from the Basque Country, enrolled in an immersionmodel where Basque was the main language of instruction, whileSpanish and English were taught as language subjects. Theintervention included six teaching units on mathematics andscience, delivered in Basque, Spanish, and English. Studentsworked with expository texts and CALS in each language,fostering comparisons between them through pedagogicaltranslanguaging. To assess metalinguistic awareness, Think-AloudProtocols (TAP) were conducted. In this task, students translatedwords from Basque to Spanish and reflected aloud on theirmental processes. The results indicated a statistically significantimprovement in metalinguistic awareness after the intervention,where students reported higher levels of metalinguistic reflection,particularly in advanced metalinguistic awareness levels such asMeta-Awareness (MA) or Underlying Rule (UR).