Metalinguistic Awareness and Bilingual vs. Monolingual EFL Learners: Evidence from a Diagonal Bilingual Context

This paper reports a study of 85 iranian efl learners in the english language department of urmia university. it explores the possible differences between performance of 38 persian monolingual and 47 turkish-persian bilingual efl learners on metalinguistic tasks of ungrammatical structures and translation. the underlying hypothesis is that bilinguals in diagonal bilingual contexts experience a significant development in terms of their metalinguistic awareness. results of some t-test analyses indicated consistent differences between the two groups in favour of bilinguals. the findings, thus, strengthen the proposal that bilinguals may develop a more analytical orientation to language that may help them in learning additional languages. the findings are discussed in relation to implications on efl learning as well as efl teaching.