Research into young learners' metalinguistic awareness has led to both definitions of the construct and key findings about its role in children's cognitive and linguistic development. I briefly summarise this research before introducing two established theoretical models that can help us understand the concept of metalinguistic awareness more broadly: Ellen Bialystok's classic dichotomy of analysis of knowledge and control of processing, and Rod Ellis's notion of explicit (second language) knowledge. This is followed by an overview of measures of metalinguistic awareness that have been used in empirical studies to date as well as an illustration and critique of selected measures. As a result, I propose a model that combines features of the two previous frameworks by conceptualising knowledge representations and processes in terms of (1) how implicit/explicit and (2) how specific/schematic they are. I explain this model to illustrate how it can serve as a useful thinking tool. In particular, I argue that the model not only allows us to theorise measures of metalinguistic awareness more clearly and easily, but that it can also capture tasks aimed at assessing other linguistic and cognitive abilities. The article concludes with a brief outlook on future research into metalinguistic awareness.

中文翻译：

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测量儿童的元语言意识

对年轻学习者元语言意识的研究得出了该结构的定义以及关于其在儿童认知和语言发展中的作用的重要发现。在介绍两个已建立的理论模型之前，我简要总结了这项研究，这两个模型可以帮助我们更广泛地理解元语言意识的概念：艾伦·比亚韦斯托克（Ellen Bialystok）的知识分析和处理控制的经典二分法，以及罗德·埃利斯（Rod Ellis）的显性（第二语言）知识概念。接下来是迄今为止在实证研究中使用的元语言意识测量的概述，以及对选定测量的说明和批评。因此，我提出了一个模型，通过根据（1）隐式/显式程度和（2）它们的具体/示意性程度来概念化知识表示和过程，从而结合了先前两个框架​​的特征。我解释这个模型是为了说明它如何成为一种有用的思维工具。特别是，我认为该模型不仅使我们能够更清晰、更轻松地对元语言意识的测量进行理论化，而且还可以捕获旨在评估其他语言和认知能力的任务。文章最后对元语言意识的未来研究进行了简要展望。