« CLAUDIO ABBADO ASSAGGIAVA UNA PESCA? » CONSAPEVOLEZZA METALINGUISTICA NEI PROCESSI DI INTERCOMPRENSIONE SPONTANEA DEL CATALANO IN STUDENTI ITALIANI

: This contribution illustrates and discusses the intercomprehension (IC) ability of Italianspeaking university students reading texts in Catalan, elicited through the techniques of transposition of meaning and Think-Aloud Pair Problem Solving (TAPPS), in relation to the level of metalinguistic awareness in their L1, as measured through an adapted version of the Italian « Test di abilità metalinguistiche n. 3 » (TAM-3; Pinto,1999; eng. MAT-3, Metalinguistic Ability Test n.3). We present data from a pilot study with a small sample aimed at analyzing the relationship between multilingual competence emerging in IC processes, and metalinguistic awareness. Despite the fact that metalinguistic competence plays a central role in FL/L2 learning (Bialystok, 1991, 2001, 2011; Cenoz, Hufeisen, Jessner, 2003; Jessner, 2006), and sometimes a greater role than multilingual knowledge (Spellerberg, 2015), there are rather few contributions in the field of IC focusing on the role of this aspect when reading texts written in languages little or not at all known by the readers. From our analysis, a partial correspondence emerges between the scores obtained in the TAM-3 and the way the informants performed the meaning transposition tasks in L1 and the TAPPS. Most importantly, it is shown that informants at the highest level of the TAM-3 display a strategic behaviour, particularly when it comes to solving comprehension obstacles consisting of words that are considered opaque. The scores obtained by the informants are compared and the profiles of some of them are presented in order to illustrate the main characteristics of each level