Metalinguistic knowledge and language experience – a starting point for conceptual change?

According to large scale performance surveys, students show rather weak systematic metalinguistic knowledge and struggle to express their observations. Due to their language awareness, though, they build up metalinguistic knowledge based on their individual language experience, which invites discussing “conceptual change” as a theoretical concept for learning (1), even though the quality and the structure of metalinguistic knowledge remain to be explored further (2). This paper discusses examples of a project exploring how metalinguistic reflection outside the classroom is related to individual experience, e. g. multilingualism. The examples will be discussed to ask if they correspond to “conceptual change”, what impact the findings of the project have on didactics of language and how they could encourage metalinguistic discourse in the classroom (4).