The Development of Metalinguistic Awareness in Japanese Children: Effects of Early English Education

摘要

In this study, we investigated the development of metalinguistic awareness in young children and the effect of early exposure to a non-native language. We carried out two kinds of experiments to assess metalinguistic awareness of three groups of Japanese children of the second year in their kindergarten with different levels of exposure to English and compared the results to the results of their own first year's. The results revealed significant differences between the groups: children with larger amount of exposure to English showed a higher level of metalinguistic awareness.