Over Belgen, Turken en schoonmoeders: Metalinguïstisch inzicht in de vroege adolescentie

Samenvatting

This study investigated the metalinguistic abilities of 91 prevocational and pre-academic students from 7th and 9th grade. To prevent educational influences, we measured comprehension of joking riddles, ‘language of the playground’, rather than typical academic language performance. Preacademic students performed better than prevocational students, 9th graders better than 7th graders and riddles which require linguistic knowledge to resolve the joke were more difficult than riddles requiring world knowledge. The study also revealed that vocabulary was an important predictor of metalinguistic abilities, and that riddle comprehension and appreciation were weakly correlated. Furthermore, metalinguistic abilities and vocabulary size of pre-academic 9th graders was larger than of their peers from 7th grade, but this was not the case for prevocational students. Because vocabulary, grade and school track were related, it can be concluded that linguistic riddle comprehension is a valid and appropriate measurement of metalinguistic abilities of young adolescents.