Metalinguistic reflection and its relation to the quality of scientific explanations

Metalinguistic reflection (MR), understood as the ability to consciously attend to language, can help the writer in textualization. In disciplinary genres, whose production is demanding, having evidence of factors to scaffold its construction is a key aspect. However, more studies are needed to understand the characteristics of MR and the relation with texts written by students in disciplinary genres. This study analyzes the relation between MR and the quality of scientific explanations written by 359 4th grade elementary students in two didactic units. We characterized RM performances in five dimensions (discursive, textual, grammatical, lexical-semantic, conceptual). Regression models showed that performance in RM predicts the quality of explanations, with a different contribution per dimension and didactic unit. In addition, performance in the conceptual dimension for unit 1 significantly predicted the quality of explanations for unit 2. Our study shows that MR is a variable associated with textual construction that we recommend enhancing in future instructional proposals.