Young bilingual students' use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language

Young bilingual students’use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language Oihana Leonet , Elizabet Arocena and Eider Saragueta Abstract This study investigates the use of metacognitive strategies by young emergent multilingual students in a translanguaging pedagogy scenario. From a multilingual perspective, we understand metacognition as a broader concept that refers to the learning or thinking processes that encapsulate metalinguistic and crosslinguistic awareness. We focus on the performance phase of the reading process where students deploy strategies and monitor the progress and quality of the activity. The participants were 48 bilingual fifth graders in a multilingual school in the Basque Autonomous Community in the north of Spain; 39.5% of the students had Basque as their first language, while 60.5% had Spanish, similar to the sociolinguistic context of the school, and all were learning English as a foreign language. Data for this study were collected in the English class while the students were set in pairs to complete a reading comprehension task. Their performance was audio-recorded, and language-related episodes were analysed to explore the strategic behaviour of the students. This analysis identified episodes where students talked about either their language production or language use. The findings show that although pedagogical translanguaging focuses mainly on raising crosslinguistic awareness, it can also develop a broader metalinguistic awareness and facilitate metacognitive reflection. The study highlights the link between enhancing metalinguistic awareness and the development of multilingual students’metacognitive knowledge for effective self-regulated strategic behaviour when reading in a foreign language. Key words: metacognitive strategy, metalinguistic awareness, multilingualism, pedagogical translanguaging Introduction Recently, within the multilingual context of education in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) in the north of Spain, the department of education has established a more holistic view of multilingualism in the curriculum and has started to train language teachers to better serve the needs of the students. The current study is set within a broader research project that aims at exploring multilingual strategies to develop students’language competence in Basque and Spanish, the two co-official languages in the territory, and the foreign language English (Leonet, 2018). One of the aspects that most concerns the educational community of the BAC is comprehension, since it is a fundamental competence for the personal and academic development of students. The educational department is currently supporting further research projects to explore new teaching approaches to enhance reading comprehension in an increasingly multilingual educational system. Given the importance of comprehension in this multilingual context, it is crucial to understand the strategies that students employ to navigate and enhance their reading skills. This study, therefore, focuses on the metacognitive strategies young emergent multilingual students use when monitoring, handling and completing a reading comprehension task. According to Brown and Larson-Hall (2015, p. 137), ‘learners need to be able to think about their own learning: how to plan for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it’. In our study, we explored whether students are able to choose appropriate strategies based on a specific goal or condition and whether they are aware of the relationship between the selected strategy and the outcome. Metacognitive strategies in language learning Metacognition refers to the ability to reflect on one’s own thought processes and to monitor and control one’s own learning (Veenman et al., 2006). Pintrich (2004)defines metacognition as students’ © 2024 The Author(s). Literacy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of United Kingdom Literacy Association. Literacy Volume Number xxxx 2024 1 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. cognition control, which, according to Zimmerman (1986), is part of students’self-regulated learning (SRL), a proactive process that involves motivation and behaviour together with metacognition. These strategies are techniques and methods that learners can use to better understand and regulate their own learning. In second-language learning, the use of metacognitive strategies can lead to more effective and efficient learning outcomes (Cai & Zhao, 2023), since these strategies are transferable across languages (Cummins, 2017). Based on the scientific literature of the last decades, metacognitive strategies have been broadly structured into planning, monitoring and evaluation (Oxford, 2017). Chamot and El-Dinary (1999) identified the strategies used by students in the reading and writing process and classified them into metacognitive and cognitive strategies. The former includes knowledge of planning, control of the process (monitoring) and evaluation. Cognitive strategies, on the other hand, would be related to the following actions: connecting prior knowledge with new knowledge to build meaning; to use specific language knowledge to answer problems; manipulation of information; access to resources (e.g., dictionary and teacher/peers); and memory strategies. Driven by the research of language acquisition and multilingualism, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in identifying strategies that enable the use of the entire linguistic repertoire of multilingual students. Several studies have highlighted the importance of developing students’metalinguistic awareness and explicitly teaching to recognise crosslinguistic similarities (see, e.g., Arteagoitia & Howard, 2015; Cenoz et al., 2022; Cenoz & Gorter, 2020,2021; Cenoz & Santos, 2020; Dressler et al., 2011; Hopp & Thoma, 2021; Leonet et al., 2020; Leonet & Saragueta, 2023). According to Cummins (2017), common features between languages (e.g., conceptual elements, linguistic elements, and metacognitive and metalinguistic learning strategies) and individual cognitive abilities or attributes (e.g., oral communication skills) are factors that influence each other, to the extent that individual attributes allow transfers between languages. Skills are learned over time through the conscious learning of strategies, and once they are in the individual’s cognitive apparatus, they are useful for making transfers between languages, as long as the social and school contexts encourage students to do so (Cummins, 2017). In this study, the transfer of metacognitive strategies was attempted from a pedagogical translanguaging perspective. According to Ringbom (2007), similarities between languages are important variables in the use of learning strategies, because, through them, the student seeks the effectiveness of the learning activity. When multilingual students make a conscious search for similarities between languages, they are using learning strategies, and this behaviour can also be linked to the development of metalinguistic awareness (Jessner, 2008; Kemp, 2007; Otwinowska, 2016). In the context of multilingual education and language learning, the concept of metalinguistic awareness, understood as ‘the ability to focus on linguistic form and to switch focus between form and meaning’ (Jessner, 2014, p. 176), is closely related to metacognition. Metacognition refers to the awareness of one’s learning or thinking processes, while metalinguistic awareness is a subfield because it refers to the reflection on the processes related to language (Rutgers & Evans, 2017). In the same line, crosslinguistic awareness is a concept in which attention is placed upon the language(s) in use and through establishing similarities and differences. As indicated by Cenoz and Gorter (2021), metalinguistic awareness can be considered as part of metacognition. These authors explain that metacognitive awareness, metalinguistic awareness and crosslinguistic awareness can be represented as three concentric circles, as shown in Figure 1. As Cenoz and Gorter (2021) stated, pedagogical translanguaging focuses mainly on developing crosslinguistic awareness, but it can also promote metalinguistic awareness, which is a broader concept than crosslinguistic awareness. In the following section, we will delve into multilingual pedagogies that raise students’metalinguistic and crosslinguistic awareness. Figure 1: Metacognitive awareness, metalinguistic awareness and crosslinguistic awareness in language learning (Cenoz & Gorter, 2021). 2Young bilingual students’use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Raising metalinguistic awareness through translanguaging pedagogies Translanguaging is an umbrella term that encapsulates different theories and practices. For the purpose of the current study, we have coined the concept of pedagogical translanguaging, which is ‘a pedagogic theory and practice that refers to instructional strategies which integrate two or more languages’(Cenoz & Gorter, 2020,p. 2). Following the original use of the term translanguaging in Wales, pedagogical translanguaging is a pedagogical practice designed beforehand to develop multilingualism and multiliteracy (Cenoz & Gorter, 2020,2021). Drawing from Cenoz and Gorter’s interpretation of translanguaging, we adopt a cognitive perspective, viewing language as a tool that mediates mental processes. In this framework, Basque, Spanish and English are dynamically and functionally integrated for cognitive operations (see Lewis et al., 2012). Cenoz and Santos (2020) reported the results of a study in which in-service teachers were trained to plan and implement pedagogical translanguaging activities involving the use of two or more languages of the curriculum in their own classrooms. According to the results, the participating teachers and their students found translaguaging pedagogical strategies useful for language learning and for increasing language awareness. Uddling and Reath Warren (2023)alsofoundthat facilitating student’s entire linguistic resources in science class can enhance metalinguistic awareness and provide opportunities for language learning to newcomers with limited proficiency in the target language. Similarly, AUTHOR4 carried out an intervention study with fifth-grade primary school students in which Basque, Spanish and English were fluidly used with didactic purpose. Students were bilingual in Basque and Spanish and recent English learners, with very limited communicativecompetenceinthislatterlanguage.Ethnographic field notes and transcriptions from focus group discussions were qualitatively analysed. The results showed that when discussing crosslinguistic similarities and translanguaging strategies, the students exhibited different levels of awareness. According to those students, the activities to enhance metalinguistic awareness were particularly helpful when learning the foreign language, and the most valued translanguaging strategies were cognate identification and complex word decomposition. In fact, one of the most important functions of pedagogical translanguaging is to enhance students’metalinguistic awareness (Cenoz & Gorter, 2021), although it is worth distinguishing between metalinguistic awareness and metalinguistic knowledge. While metalinguistic awareness does not necessarily involve depth analysis, metalinguistic knowledge implies explicit and verbalised reflection (Cenoz & Gorter, 2021; Falk et al., 2015). According to Cenoz and Gorter (2021), pedagogical translanguaging can boost both metalinguistic awareness and knowledge; however, the degree of metalinguistic awareness needed for crosslinguistic comparison will depend on the learner’s age and prior knowledge. Yet a higher level of metalinguistic awareness can facilitate association with prior language knowledge (Jessner, 2014; Woll, 2018). One of the most well-known crosslinguistic awareness strategies is cognate identification. Moreover, a positive relationship between cognate awareness and reading has been found (Arteagoitia & Howard, 2015; Dressler et al., 2011; Nagy et al., 1993), yet students do not always notice them (AUTHOR2; Nagy et al., 1993). In another intervention study related to the current pedagogical project, AUTHOR2 explored the relationship between teaching cognates and metalinguistic awareness. The results showed that the identification of cognates is related to the linguistic characteristics of cognates. Overall, both students in the experimental and control groups failed in identifying cognates that were opaque at the orthographic and semantic levels. However, students in the experimental group showed more awareness of the cognate strategy. They concluded that cognate instruction should focus on developing strategies to identify non-transparent rather than all types of cognates. In a similar vein, Nagy et al. (1993) found that cognate transparency influenced upper-elementary students’ability to identify cognates. According to them, even a small orthographic shift can hinder cognate recognition. In turn, Vanhove and Berthele (2015) investigated item-related variables that affected cognate identification. They concluded that the overall formal distance between the word pairs was the most important predictor for cognate identification. However, not only orthographic transparency determines cognate identification, but also semantic correspondence determines whether orthographically similar words in different languages can lead to crosslinguistic transfer (Möller & Zeevaert, 2015). For example, polysemic words may cause problems in crosslinguistic transfer at the semantic level (Lubliner & Hiebert, 2011). Since orthographic and semantic transparency affect correct cognate association when reading, instruction on cognate identification should focus on ‘helping students become familiar with high-frequency cognate patterns and gain expertise in classifying cognates based on these patterns’(Lubliner & Hiebert, 2011, p. 88). Möller and Zeevaert (2015) carried out a qualitative study based on a think-aloud protocol and found that in crosslinguistic identifications, cognates contribute both semantic anticipations based on the context and perception of similarities. These authors suggest that Literacy Volume Number xxxx 2024 3 © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License learners made use of the context when target words were not orthographically transparent while they focus on formal similarities when cognates were identical or very similar. Pedagogical translanguaging in the current study aims at teaching crosslinguistic strategies to develop reading comprehension. However, the development of reading competence involves further metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge. As indicated by Cenoz and Gorter (2021), metacognition encapsulates metalinguistic awareness across languages as well. When learners mobilise their metacognitive knowledge to develop communicative competence, they are building their multilingual competence that draws on metalinguistic awareness. We explore bilingual primary students’metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness when completing a joint reading activity in their foreign language (English). We analyse how students use different metacognitive strategies together and how they navigate across languages to understand and build new meaning. The following question will guide the study: RQ: What are the metacognitive strategies bilingual young students use when completing a comprehension task in the EFL? Methods A qualitative methodology has been chosen to understand the distinctive features of the phenomenon and its complexity rather than to highlight generalities (Stake, 2000). The pedagogical intervention reported in this study is part of a larger project conducted by the Donostia Research group on Education and Multilingualism (DREAM) research group that aimed at developing students’communicative competence in three languages and increase their language and metalinguistic awareness. For more detailed information regarding the project design, implementation and findings regarding metalinguistic awareness growth, see AUTHOR1, AUTHOR2, AUTHOR3 and AUTHOR4. Research context The study data came from the second year of a 2-year research project conducted in a trilingual primary school in the BAC in the north of Spain. Education in the BAC is considered multilingual and is characterised not only for having the minority language Basque at all levels of education but also for the increasingly prominent role of the foreign language English. The educational law states that all students must develop language competences in the two co-official languages, Basque and Spanish, and at least in one foreign language, mainly English. Due to the low social use of Basque, a large population of students in the territory has limited or no access to the language outside school; thus, having Basque as the main language of instruction ensures exposure to the language for all students. In recent years, the education department has established a holistic view of multilingualism in the curriculum and has started to train language teachers on new multilingual pedagogical strategies. The research group DREAM worked closely for 2 years with teachers and students in a trilingual primary school to design and implement a programme based on pedagogical translanguaging to develop multilingual communicative competence and to promote multilingual and metalinguistic awareness. The study data came from the second year of a 2-year research project. The project lasted 12 weeks and consisted of teacher-led lessons during Basque, Spanish and English language classes for about 40–50% of the time. Students work with the three languages at the same time in each of the language classes so as to activate their whole linguistic repertoire and enhance metalinguistic awareness across languages. In this article, we focus on the interaction of student pairs when completing a reading comprehension task in a foreign language (English). Participants The participants in this study were 28 female students and 20 male students enrolled in the fifth grade of primary education. The language spoken by these students reflects the sociolinguistic context of the school, with 39.5% of the students speaking Basque and 60.5% speaking Spanish as their first language. All students were English emergent learners. The criteria to select the participants were a similar level of multilingual competence in the three languages as measured at the beginning of the academic year. Data collection The data were audio-recorded during a joint reading activity completed by students during a 2-year project (see AUTHOR2). A total of 24 activities were recorded, with an average duration of 17 min each. The researcher placed audio recorders on students’desks while she took detailed field notes. From the classroom observations in the first year of the project and the preliminary analysis of the completed materials, we identified activities that promoted the most 4Young bilingual students’use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License language-related episodes (LREs). We selected a joint reading activity due to the low productive capacity of the participants in English. In pairs, the students read an expository passage that was adapted to their proficiency level. The length of the text was 86 words. Once the students had read the text, they had to answer four open questions. These questions were provided in both English and Basque to ensure that the students could understand what they were asked (see Figure 2). The language used by the researcher was Basque, as it is the main language of the school, but the students were allowed to use Basque, Spanish or English. We encouraged equitable collaboration during the reading by asking the students to read in turns. While one partner read, the other would listen and follow the reading. Each pair of students was given only one worksheet, so collaboration between the two was necessary, and further equitable collaboration was encouraged during the discussion and agreement before writing the responses. This format was familiar to the students; however, they all received clear and same instructions. Data analysis Drawing from research examining collaborative dialogue (Swain, 2000; Swain & Lapkin, 2000), we analysed the collected data by identifying the first LREs occurring during the collaborative reading task. As defined by Swain and Lapkin (1998), LREs are ‘any part of a dialogue where the students talk about the language they are producing, question their language use, or correct themselves or others’(p. 326). LREs have been used in further investigation with young students in bilingual settings (Foster & Ohta, 2005; Lapkin et al., 2002; Martin-Beltrán, 2010; Mayo, 2002). Qualitative analysis was conducted (Erickson, 1998; Miles & Huberman, 1994) for the subjective interpretation of talk that emerged from the data. We read through transcriptions and field notes several times for discovering patterns that captured the students’attention to language and their strategic behaviour when collaboratively reading. Following Swain and Lapkin (1998), we identified LREs in which students explicitly reflected on their language use, questioned about language(s) and played with new language forms. In an initial open-coding process, a total of 198 LREs were identified, of which 48 reflect cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies. The other 150 episodes captured metalinguistic awareness and knowledge. In an axial analysis, LREs related to reading strategies were classified according to pre-established categories as either metacognitive or cognitive. Furthermore, they were grouped according Figure 2: Answer sheet of the reading comprehension task completed by students. Literacy Volume Number xxxx 2024 5 © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License to the purpose of the strategy used (see Table 1). In accordance with the guidelines of the Ethics Committee of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), the data were anonymised to ensure confidentiality. Findings In order to explore the use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies the young language learners use when participating in an intervention to develop metalinguistic awareness, we will look at the qualitative data obtained during the completion of the task. The strategic behaviour of the students when completing the reading comprehension task will be described following the structure of the reading task (four comprehension questions). Once we analysed the data, we found several examples of students using a variety of metacognitive strategies presented in Table 1. The strategies used by the students can be classified as (1) metacognitive strategies used to acknowledge the difficulty when comprehending the text and (2) cognitive strategies used to overcome the comprehension difficulties. Among the metacognitive strategies students may use when acknowledging comprehension difficulties are planning strategies (e.g., read aloud and direct attention); selective attention towards unknown words, keywords or salient linguistic features; and monitoring strategies (e.g., self-correct errors, confirm or change information, and selfquestioning). On the other hand, among the cognitive strategies or those used to overcome comprehension difficulties, students can use their background knowledge to make inferences and predictions based on known words and context. Furthermore, students can also use strategies to manipulate information (e.g., translation and retelling) and ask questions to clarify unknown information, seek general help, or get help with spelling words. The students, in pairs, read a text on Antarctica and collaboratively answered four comprehension questions. Although, during the intervention, students received training on cognate identification, they were not explicitly encouraged to identify cognates in the instructions presented. However, we found several evidence of cognate awareness in the data. According to the data, some dyads used their cognate knowledge in a more accurate way than other pairs. We found some accurate and inaccurate examples of the simultaneous use of different strategies during the reading comprehension task. That is, we found several evidence of the accurate use of cognate knowledge along with other cognitive (e.g., use of contextual clues) and metacognitive (e.g., self-regulation) strategies. For example, in Excerpt 1,wefind an LRE between Students 1 and 2 when trying to answer Question 1: What is the profession of the people who live in Antarctica? In this LRE, Student 1 emphasised the adverb only, which became a useful clue to identify the correct response. In this case, this student uses the metacognitive strategy of putting selective attention on the salient linguistic feature, the adverb only. This adverb informs the student that the only people in Antarctica are the scientists; thus, the profession of those people must be that. When looking for the answer to the same question, Students 21 and 22 (Excerpt 2) show difficulty identifying the cognate scientist. The difficulty seems to derive from the incapability to identify meaningful parts in the cognate. During the large project, it was observed that students made semantic and orthographic crosslinguistic connections focusing on the root, but ignored the information provided by the affixes. In this LRE, the verbalisation suggests that although they identified the meaning of the core morpheme within the cognate, they were not able to link the suffix-ist to the root. Therefore, they did not identify scientist as a profession that was created by combining the two morphemes. Students 21 and 22 seem to be relying on the monitoring metalinguistic strategy, self-questioning and also on the cognitive strategy of resorting to background knowledge. However, in this case, their background knowledge has been incomplete, missing the function of the suffix-ist. Table 1: Metacognitive and cognitive strategies for comprehension identified in the analysis of the LREs. (1) Metacognitive (2) Cognitive Planning Read aloud and direct attention Resorting to background knowledge Inferences and predictions based on known words and context Selective attention Attention to unknown words, keywords, salient linguistic features, … Manipulating information Translation and retelling Monitoring Self-correct errors, confirm or change information, and self-questioning Questioning To clarify unknown information, to ask for general help, and to seek help when spelling words 6Young bilingual students’use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License In Excerpt 3, Students 3 and 4 made use of the metacognitive strategy of monitoring to self-correct an inaccurate response. At first, they mixed the response to the first question (What is the profession of the people who live in Antarctica?) with the response to the second one (What do they investigate?). However, later, they did a better interpretation of the content, apparently due to combining self-regulation strategies, morphological awareness and cognate knowledge. Figure 2shows the answer sheet completed by Students 3 and 4. Though the translation was not accurate, the use of cognate knowledge can be seen when Student 4 first mentions the word cienciak (Spanish/Basque), making a semantic and orthographic connection between the English root and the equivalents in Spanish/Basque. When Student 4 translated the word, she used Spanish phonetic rules. However, she also added the Basque article -ak at the end of the word. She ignored the suffix -ist, and that could be the reason why she did not match the answer from the start. Even though they did not pay attention to the cognate clue at first, they changed the answer later on when they realised that the first question referred to a profession and not to the focus of the investigation. We cannot assert that they transferred the information provided by the suffix -ist from their verbalisation. However, it seems that the combination of metacognitive and metalinguistic strategies helped them get the correct answer. Considering that the text was in the participants’ third language and that they did not know all the vocabulary in the text, we found many examples of participants focusing on the most transparent cognates (e.g., dinosaur and fossils) and avoiding other clues that would lead them to figure out the precise answer. That is the case presented in Excerpt 4, where Students 33 and 34 are looking for the answer to Question 2: What do they investigate? In this case, we can see that they relied on the most transparent cognates as the reference words to answer the question without making use of any other metacognitive or cognitive strategy. As a result, these two students committed the most common error during the reading comprehension task, answering Question 2 (What do they investigate?) with the answer to Question 3 (What did they find?). More students had difficulties with the second question due to the semantic ambiguity of the cognate study, which was introduced purposely in the text instead of using the more transparent cognate investigation. For example, in Excerpt 5, Student 27 and Student 28 self-corrected the answer, using the metacognitive strategy of monitoring, when they realised that in the second question, they were asked about what the scientist living in Antarctica investigated (studied) in general, whereas in the third question, they were asked about what those scientists specifically found there. In this case, Student 28 translated the question using the cognitive strategy of manipulating the information. When Student 27 suggested that the information they had written in the second question actually belonged to the third one, Student 28 empathised and translated the word investigatzen (investigating), which is created by combining Spanish and Basque resources (the Spanish root plus the ending of the verb form [gerund] in Basque). In the first reading, the students could have Excerpt 1: St1: which is the profession of the people who live in Antarctica? Scientists, ez? […scientist, isn’t it?] St2: ¿a ver? [let’s see?] St1: Ze hemen ipintzen du: the only people who live in Antarctica are scientist. [Because it says here: …] St2: Bai [yes] St1: orduan, scientist. [S1 writes the response on the answer sheet] Literacy Volume Number xxxx 2024 7 © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License transferred the meaning of ‘study’either from the cognate pairs estudiar (Spanish) or estudiatu (Basque), which could have been understood as learning. However, in the second reading, the students corrected themselves upon realising that the word ’study’actually referred to investigate. In this case, Student 28 dealt with semantic ambiguity and accurately linked the word study with the act of investigating when enthusiastically saying investigatzen. The cognitive strategy of resourcing to the background knowledge may have facilitated the crosslinguistic connection. Similarly, in the next line, Student 27 emphasised the cognate discovered related to the verb find, which is in the third question (What did they find?). These students used crosslinguistic resources in a strategic way. In contrast, in Excerpt 6, Student 39 and Student 40 identified the correct answer at the beginning of the excerpt, but then they changed their mind due to an incorrect semantic transfer. They linked the word study to the act of learning about a school subject instead of investigating, which was key for the identification of the correct answer. In this case too, the students resort to their prior knowledge even though, in this case, it is used incorrectly; the students only take one meaning of study: to learn something or about something. In Question 4: What kind of dinosaurs lived in Antarctica? The participants had to look for two compounds: plant-eating and meat-eating, in order to answer correctly. Most of the dyads were able to find a correct or partially correct response. We found evidence of students’strategic behaviour and morphological awareness that may have been acquired as a result of exposure to translanguaging materials. In Excerpt 7, Students 7 and 8 discuss the meaning of the word meat-eating. They accurately use their background knowledge about the topic along with morphological awareness to answer the question. Student 7 Excerpt 2: St21: zein da Antartikan bizi diren pertsonen lanbidea? [which is the profession of the people who live in Antarctica?] St22: the only people who live in Antarctica are [he points out the word scientist] St21: nik ere bai uste dut hori [I also think it is that] St22: ya, baina esque ez du jartzen [yes, but it doesn’t say that] St21: ya [Yeah] R: Zer ez du jartzen? [what is not said?] St22: adibidez, eh, euren lanbidea, profession hitza ez du jartzen eta orduan ez dakit. [For example, their job, the word profession is not there, so I don’t know.] [They decide to move on to the second question] 8Young bilingual students’use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License immediately identified the correct response. When the researcher asked her to go on explaining how she knew the meaning of meat-eating, she stated that as she knew the meaning of meat and eat separately, she was able to find out the meaning of meat-eating. She also provided translation of each part (meat/ haragia/carne; eat/jan) in Basque and Spanish, as well as the equivalent word (haragijalea) in Basque. Then, when the researcher made a crosslinguistic connection between the way meat-eating and hargijalea are formed, both students identified the words to be compounds showing to have a declarative knowledge of Excerpt 3: St3: Which is the profession of the people who live in Antarctica? Zein da Antartikan bizi diren biztanleen lanbidea? [St3 reads the question in Basque] [skimming] St4: ‘Cienciak’? (Spa) [skimming] St4: Study the weather, climate and land. St3: bai? Hori? [Really? That one?] [St4 writes the response] St4: What do they investigate? Zer ikertzen dute? [They read the question in Basque] [Skimming] St3: hau dago txarto, hau da, (.) ez da hemen? [This is wrong, this is not here] [He realizes that the first response matches Q2; St4 erases the answer from Q1] St4: da ‘scientist’. Jartzen dugu? [it’s‘scientist’. Do we put it?] [St4 changes the response for Q1] Literacy Volume Number xxxx 2024 9 © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License WOLL, N. (2018) Investigating dimensions of metalinguistic awareness: what think-aloud protocols revealed about the cognitive processes involved in positive transfer from L2 to L3. Language Awareness, 27.1, pp. 67–85. ZIMMERMAN, B. J. (1986) Becoming a self-regulated learner: which are the key subprocesses? Contemporary Educational Psychology,11, pp. 307–313. CONTACT THE AUTHORS Oihana Leonet, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Tolosa Hiribidea 70, 20018 Donostia, Spain. email: [email protected] Elizabet Arocena, Department of Didactics of Language and Literature, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Donostia, Spain Eider Saragueta, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Donostia, Spain 16 Young bilingual students’use of metacognitive strategies to overcome comprehension difficulties when reading in the foreign language © UKLA. 17414369, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lit.12383 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License