Metacognition Triggered by a Social Aspect of Expertise

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to show how the social dimension of academic expertise affects cognitive and metacognitive activities in the context of speaking English as a foreign language. Two studies are reported in which pairs of French students interacted in English. The first study showed that students randomly said to be experts in English performed better than students said to be nonexperts. The second study replicated this effect, but showed that it was slightly modulated by the students’ actual expertise in English. This research clearly supports the claim that in communicative interaction, what individuals are told about their own and their partner’s expertise along a comparative dimension (here, English proficiency) is a determinant of the quantity and quality of their performance. A fictitious expert position, for example, has the power to promote metacognitive activity. These studies suggest that academic performance should be investigated not only from a cognitive and didactic standpoint, but also in terms of the social aspects of academic expertise.