Metalanguage: to teach or not to teach?

“Today we are going to revise Past Simple. I hope you remember that it’s a tense where the subject is followed by the second form of a verb, also known as past participle”. Hopefully, we do not start our lessons this way anymore. However, there is something in this sentence that has been a matter of heated debates. You guessed it – that’s metalanguage. 

What’s this?

Metalanguage is the language used to talk about language and to describe it with the help of some special terminology. It is often used in classrooms when teaching English and not less often frowned upon. “Kids don’t need metalanguage, it’s too hard for them!”. “Teens get bored when we talk about parts of speech and tenses names!”. “My adult students have forgotten what all these terms mean even in their mother tongue, what metalanguage are you talking about?”. Sounds familiar? Then, in today’s article, we’ll try to find some benefits of using metalanguage and the ways of how to do it.

Why is it useful?

Language-related terminology is considered to be hard and intimidating. Some experts say that it is not used outside the classroom and, that is why, is not worth attention. However, let’s look at some benefits first:

• Once learned, metalanguage can be applied to different areas. This knowledge can increase learner’s autonomy a lot. Even children use self-access materials, dictionaries and reference books. Adults address them even more frequently. Being aware of terminology might help them understand why ‘increase’ and ‘increase’ can be pronounced differently, in what cases ‘face’ can act as a verb, and how to google for those ‘I wish I were…’ structures they want to know more about.
• Metalanguage is efficient for error correction. Every time your student goes “I buyed yesterday a new dress”, it is enough just to say “verb” or “word order” to draw their attention to a mistake, if necessary. Analytic learners, who love accuracy and precision, will especially appreciate highlighting terminology and even expect it from the teacher. 
• It is quite difficult to describe the rules of a language without using terminology. Having some special terms to describe those rules can be reassuring and comforting for certain learners, as it can help them make sense of things.

How does it work?

First, don’t forget about grading. Approach your lower-level students with a basic survival kit: parts of speech, concepts of present, past and future, names of the most relevant tenses, vowels and consonants. 

Start with examples, not terms. If you want to introduce your students to parts of speech, it might be a good idea to write something like “tomato, trousers, hamster, pen” and ask what these words have in common. After a couple of creative responses, you will eventually hear students saying the word “nouns” in their first language. Same with tenses – introduce the idea, the meaning, and then give it a name. “Look, the classroom is all ready for Christmas. We have decorated it!” with further elicitation sounds less frightening that “Do you know what Present Perfect is?”, for sure. 

Draw learners attention to metalanguage if you feel that it works in your particular situation.  When your classroom is full of analytic learners who want to know exactly how the language works, you sometimes need to address terminology even more. For instance, while revising food vocabulary with lower-level students, you might want to have a competition. Divide them into groups and invite to think of 7 nouns, 7 verbs and 7 adjectives related to food. The time is limited, the winner gets something tasty. Also, colour code  words on the board when referring to different parts of speech or various tenses. It’s a good idea to stick to more or less the same colours for the same metalanguage categories, e.g. pink for nouns, green for verbs, purple for Continuous aspect. Visual learners will thank you for that.

Play a bit so that terminology doesn’t turn into something deadly boring. Practise parts of speech in games like ‘Alias’. Invite students to give definitions to the words they have on the cards. Ask them to start each definition with proper parts of speech, e.g. “There are two words, an adjective and a noun. The first means…”.  More advanced students can benefit from a metalanguage quiz, especially if they have to work with a lot of terminology at high school or preparing for exams. Prepare a matching exercise: cut into halves terms and their definitions, shuffle the papers and ask students to match them and come up with 2-3 examples. It might look like this:

If you know that the coursebook you choose involves the use of metalanguage, you can even give the definitions for such a quiz in L1 in the beginning of the year. It will help learners feel more comfortable both while doing homework and working individually in class.

All in all, just knowing the terminology of a language does not ever mean that you can speak it well. However, the terms still have great value. First, they enable learners to use self-study books and various reference materials outside the classroom with ease. Second, metalanguage helps learners better compare a foreign language with their own L1. In such a way, they might get rid of frequent mistakes or understand some concepts of the language work better. Last but not least, having dozens of coursebooks on offer, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that virtually all of them deal with metalanguage. So, let’s use it to our advantage instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

Do you ever teach metalanguage or maybe it just comes naturally to your students?