Volume: 9  Number: 6  Page: 728–741  doi:10.2167/beb390.0

Metacognitions about Language Skill and Working Memory among Monolingual and Bilingual College Students: When Does Multilingualism Matter?

Sarah Ransdell1, Marie-Laure Barbier2 and Toomas Niit3 1Nova Southeastern University, Ft Lauderdale, FL, USA, 2University of Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France and 3Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Previous research has shown that individual differences in working memory (WM) are highly predictive of a wide range of cognitive behaviours. Until recently, research has focused on monolingual, or undifferentiated, populations. The present research compares metacognitive awareness, as measured by self-ratings of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in college students of varying language experience backgrounds. Monolingual, bilingual and multilingual university students within three cultural contexts, America, Estonia and France, read for comprehension and remembered sentence final words of comprehended sentences in a reading span task in their native languages. The results show that bilingual and multilingual students have better metalinguistic awareness of their language skills in reading and WM than do students who are monolingual, but who have comparable native language skills.

Keywords: bilingualism, multilingualism, working memory, reading span, reading comprehension, metacognitive awareness

© 2006 S. Ransdell et al.

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