What is phonological awareness in L2?

Phonological awareness is widely recognized as an important component of L2 reading. Phonological awareness is also considered a primarily metalinguistic skill not affected by the individual's L2 language proficiency, or by L1-L2 linguistic distance. The current paper takes a different perspective on L2 phonological awareness. It argues that L2 phonological awareness is affected by L2 language-specific factors, and that these factors may be as equally implicated in phonological awareness in L2 as the metalinguistic insight that words may be broken down into phonological units – often considered the hallmark of the phonological awareness construct. In support of this claim, we discuss two types of evidence. The first concerns significant differences between phonological awareness in L1 and L2, as well as a significant correlation between L2 oral language proficiency and phonological awareness in L2. The second concerns linguistic distance and the effect on L2 phonological awareness of phonological differences between L1 and L2. Both pieces of evidence are used to promote the argument that it is important to view phonological awareness in L2 as a two-dimensional construct encompassing a metalinguistic component, which may be metalinguistic in nature and language-independent, and a linguistic component which is language-specific and reflects phonological representations in L2.