Beyond monolingual vs. multilingual: a fresh look at the relationship between young learners’ metalinguistic awareness and multilingualism

Despite increasing calls for acknowledging the gradient nature of multilingualism, research on its relationship with metalinguistic awareness (MLA) still primarily employs group comparison. This article aims to push the discussion of the relationship between multilingualism and MLA beyond the prevalent monolingual–multilingual distinction, by advocating for a scalar, multidimensional perspective. Participants’ language use across various contexts informed the construction of different multilingualism variables, both categorical and scalar, and we explored the predictiveness of these variables for MLA in elementary school pupils (N = 164; ages 7–8) in Norway. MLA was assessed through the MetaLearn test, a holistic measure of MLA incorporating phonological, lexical, grammatical, and cross-linguistic MLA. Correlation analyses showed that some scalar variables measured multilingualism in a largely different way than the binary category mono- vs. multilingual. However, robust linear regressions showed no significant multilingual advantage when assessed through either scalar or categorical variables. This contrasts with a widely cited general multilingual advantage regarding MLA and underscores the importance of more nuanced discussions of the two constructs and their relationship. In particular, we discuss how factors like instructional setting, proficiency in the language of testing, and the age of learners contribute to inconsistent findings in the field.