Was kann Mehrsprachigkeit leisten?

Abstract This paper investigates multiple language learners’ metalinguistic awareness at the lower secondary level in German schools in South Tyrol and its impact on decoding and transfer strategies when confronted with an unfamiliar linguistic system. Based on findings from trilingual test procedures used to assess participants’ metalinguistic competences, the study investigates the effects of different metalinguistic competence levels on such strategies. The results indicate that learners with higher metalinguistic mean scores demonstrated better decoding practices and transfer abilities, and were more frequently able to decode at a level that requires a high degree of awareness (that is, at the level of understanding) than peers with lower mean scores. High-scoring learners furthermore showed enhanced ability to analyze target structures, improved capacity for crosslinguistic consultations, and reduced reliance on avoidance strategies during the decoding process. Such findings emphasize the importance of fostering meta- and crosslinguistic competences to facilitate effective transfer strategies, which in turn have a catalytic effect on the development of the multilingual system as a whole. They also expose the need to move beyond the still prevailing notions of separate language learning processes for the learning of multiple languages and the monolingual habitus in multilingual instructional settings.