Educational Research AY2019/2020

This paper examines how primary school pupils in Singapore use language in group work. Using a combination of sociocultural discourse analysis, linguistic analysis, and contextual pedagogic analysis, one primary 1 and one primary 3 group’s interactions during their English lessons were analysed in detail. Looking specifically into how pupils’ language indicate their metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, the analyses suggest the importance of language competence in enabling more effective group talk about language. At the same time, in this multilingual context, metalinguistic awareness often appears not in the form of academic language but rather in a conversational, non-standard Singapore Colloquial English. The study also finds that pupils’ over-emphasis on task completion and grammar might disrupt development of metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness.