Development of Metalinguistic Performance in the Early School Years

Abstract

The extent to which children in kindergarten, second, and fourth grade could control their knowledge of syntax was examined in two metalinguistic tasks, judgment and repetition of sentences that varied in grammaticality. The older children produced more accurate judgments, but no age differences were noted for repetitions. Furthermore, unbiased judgment accuracy was correlated with the prereaders' reading readiness scores, providing some evidence for the relationship between the development of these two types of metalinguistic skills.