Millennial students’ metalinguistic knowledge on headlines Using Grammaticality Judgment Test

Amid the proliferation of online news portals, there is a felt need for reinvestigation millennial students’ metalinguistic knowledge (MK) on technicality headlines. Couched within Relevance Theory, including interlarding theories Communicative Competence and Monitor Hypothesis, this study investigated 80 technical selected 35 headlines vis-à-vis academic disciplines exposure to headlines/news articles. The employed Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) by Schütze (1996) following Noam Chomsky’s competence/performance distinction. results showed dearth rules headlines, which only fared around 70.66% accuracy. Likewise, that those who were never exposed had significantly lower mean score as compared with Poor cognizance semantics-syntax statistically cuts across eight Overall, understanding seems be shaped their explicit grammaticality judgment about technicalities By large, such may an indication experiences semantic ambiguities We put forth dire re-introduction ‘Journalism’ course educational levels in language classroom given today’s rapid pervasiveness breadth digitalism. Students’ lack MK can impinge semantics actual story-level depictions news.