Metacognitive awareness as the basis of learner formative assessment in developing plurilingual competence in higher education

Abstract

The importance of the use of formative assessment which creates opportunities for students to participate in a coherent and balanced process of self-development is increasing in the academic world, but there is still lack of research on the use of formative assessment in the field of plurilingual competence development in higher education and on the relationship between metacognitive awareness and student achievement as well as the differences in the use of metacognitive awareness strategies in learning English and subsequent languages in higher education. The purpose of the study is to identify the application of metacognitive awareness strategies and its efficiency integrating the elements of formative assessment into formal, non-formal and informal plurilingual competence development. The empirical part of the study used quantitative (adapted Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI)) and qualitative research (semi-structured interviews) methods to determine the efficiency of the application of metacognitive awareness strategies as the foundation for students’ formative assessment in the process of plurilingual competence development in higher education institution and was based on the outcomes of theoretical analysis of the research on the use of metacognitive awareness in plurilingual education. The research respondents were 87 plurilingual students (having competence of 3 and more languages) who were studying English, Spanish, Italian, French, German and Turkish as foreign languages as a compulsory or optional subject at a higher education institution. The online survey aimed at identifying students’ knowledge about cognition and strategies to regulate cognition, such as planning, information management, comprehension monitoring and evaluation. Ten students were then interviewed seeking to obtain more comprehensive and precise information on the analyzed issues.