Metalinguistic knowledge: A stepping stone towards L2 proficiency?

We present a study involving 16 English-speaking university learners of L2 German and L2 Spanish. Through test-based measurement and analyses of learners' reported use of metalinguistic knowledge during performance on a form-focused task, we identi!ed L2 aspects which showed correlations between learners' more accurate and sophisticated use of metalinguistic knowledge on the one hand and successful task completion on the other hand. These L2 aspects were pro!led for their implicit and explicit learning dif!culty in order to identify the characteristics of linguistic constructions and metalinguistic descriptions that may be particularly suitable for explicit teaching and learning drawing on metalinguistic knowledge.