Enhancing students' metacognition in legal English classes

BILOVÁ, Štěpánka. Enhancing students' metacognition in legal English classes. In Contemporary Approaches to Legal Linguistics: 1st International Conference of the Austrian Association for Legal Linguistics. 2019.

Basic information

• Original name: Enhancing students' metacognition in legal English classes
• Authors: BILOVÁ, Štěpánka (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Contemporary Approaches to Legal Linguistics: 1st International Conference of the Austrian Association for Legal Linguistics, 2019.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Conference abstract
• Field of Study: 60202 Specific languages
• Country of publisher: Austria
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14640/19:00113164
• Organization unit: Language Centre
• Keywords in English: legal English; academic skills; legal professional skills; metacognition in language learning

Abstract

In the last two decades, researchers have shown the importance of metacognition in language learning. By metacognition, we understand an awareness of and reflections about one’s knowledge, experiences, emotions and learning in the contexts of language learning and teaching. This paper reports on the project whose goal is to identify how students perceive the learning of legal English and to propose changes which would help them make the learning more effective. The project concerns an undergraduate course of “English for Lawyers” which is topic-based, yet, within the course, apart from language skills, academic and legal professional skills are developed as well. During several years of running this course, the teacher noticed that students comprehend and evaluate the lessons differently when considering the law content on the one hand and the skills practice on the other hand. The reported project thus focuses on two main research questions: 1. Are students aware of academic/professional skills they practise within a topic-based lesson? 2. Are students aware of developing legal English knowledge when they practise academic/professional skills? The methodology used combines the elements of reflective practice and action research. The teacher collected data from reflective questionnaires given to students in the lessons. Based on the results, the teacher analysed the teaching and learning situations and proposed changes for the next year’s course when the project will continue. The paper thus presents the process and the outcomes of the first cycle of the project.