Multilingual awareness and metacognition in multilingually diverse classrooms
Research interest in multilingual development and multilingual awareness (MLA) has been growing over the last years, and MLA has been defined as a key component of multilingual learning and multiple language use. The first part of the article focuses on the development of MLA in learners as a subcomponent of metacognition and a key factor of emergent properties in multilinguals as presented from a dynamic systems and complexity theory perspective in the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (DMM) (Herdina and Jessner, 2002). The second part describes a DMM-based language teaching and learning approach, the Five Building Blocks of Holistic Language Education/Learning, which visualises the relationship between linguistic and cognitive processes and enables teachers and learners to reflect on language acquisition and use in order to develop MLA.