Effects of Biliteracy in Writing and Metacognition: Biliterates, Bilinguals, and Monolinguals

Abstract

This quantitative study investigates metacognitive knowledge (i.e., knowledge about text characteristics and writing strategies) and metalinguistic awareness (i.e., awareness of metalanguage and language rules) of Years Ten and Eleven Sydney high school writers across three groups: Chinese-English biliterates, Chinese-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals. It also examines the relationship between the three groups’ levels of metacognition and text quality in English, and the relationship between the biliterates’ levels of metacognition and text quality in Chinese. Findings indicate biliterates are advantaged in error classification and rule explanation within metalinguistic awareness, while monolinguals are advantaged in their metacognitive knowledge about writing strategies. Socio-cultural contexts of the three groups such as past schooling, may have played a role in determining the kinds of metacognitive advantages they developed.