This student is developmentally higher in his L2 than in his L1. This is obviously because of the writing instruction he has received in English. Having worked with him for two years, though, I have seen how he has transitioned in his writing. He used to use a lot of Spanish words in his English writing, but as he learned the English vocabulary, he has stopped using Spanish words. His grammar, although fairly simple as many 1st graders’ work can be, sometimes comes across as Spanish-like.
In Spanish, he was very reluctant to write, since he was unsure of how to write many words. He doesn’t have a bank of high frequency words like he does in English, which made the process much longer and more frustrating to have to stretch out every word. When working with him, it was difficult to get him to plan his story in Spanish. He wanted to tell me his story in English, and when I asked him how he would say it in Spanish, he took some prompting to talk about his story. In English, he told me his story was about going to the park and playing Frisbee in a building with his cousin. When he retold the story in Spanish, he would only say, “Yo jugaba con Jessica en el parque.” I tried to get him to talk about the Frisbee and the building without giving him the vocabulary, but he was unable to give more details to his story.
In English, this student has some great skills that make his writing fairly easy to read. He knows many sight words and his invented spelling conveys most sounds in a word. I noted some code switching in his writing. He used see instead of watch, when talking about watching TV and movies. Also, when he read his writing to me, he read a sentence as, “It’s so funny.” He pronounced It’s like /is/ and it seems like he is combing Spanish and English because he dropped the subject and pronounced it almost like the Spanish word es.
It was difficult to assess this student’s organization of his writing. At this grade level, fairly simple stories with one or two sentences per page are expected. What is expected of first grade writing is to have the concept of writing a story (usually a personal narrative) that includes a beginning, middle and end. Also, because of the simplicity in his writing, it was difficult to gauge the discourse, but one could argue that his use of simple sentences is characteristic of English. However, when prompted to write more, he wanted to make all of his writing flow into one sentence.
Hi Reanna,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your student is much more confident about writing in English. I am sure that in a monolingual program, students feel like they are not supposed to write in Spanish, so they quickly kind of lose that part of themselves in order to write in English like they are supposed to.
I am curious as to what levels you think his L1 and L2 writing development are at. It sounds like he understands that Spanish and English are differently written. Would you say maybe he is at a phonetic stage in English? It was a little hard to tell from your examples, but I would be curious to know what kind of levels you think he might be at in his writing development.
I totally understand about assessing the organization of student writing in first grade. While some 1st grade students are obviously advanced in their writing organization, with many students it is hard to tell!
Reanna- It is very interesting to read about the frustration your student had when prompted to write in Spanish. I had the opposite in my room, only with English, at the beginning of the school year. They were reluctant, so we pursued more oral language developement which fostered their confidence in writing. I wonder if you dicatated a story for him at first, if he would feel more comfortable later writing in Spanish? Also, prompting him by syllables might help since Spanish is more phonetic. I see that you commented he is higher in his L2, with that being said, is it really his L2 or has he become dominant in that language, making his "L1" really his L2. Does he speak Spanish in his home? If so, I am surprised that there is so much reluctance to writing. Was he equally as reluctant to begin to write in English when all he has was oral exposure. If so, how was that barrier broken? Given the WIDA descirptors, where would you place his written language devleopement? Even though this is based off of writing, when he dicated what he wrote, what organizational pattern did he follow?
ReplyDeleteIris
Hi, Renae!
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to clarify- your student is in an English-only program now?
Tell me more about his English sight words-- is he spelling them phonetically using English rules of phonics, or is he applying the sounds of English to the rules of Spanish? Or simply mis-using the English phonetic code?
Did he ever learn to write or read in Spanish? I'm wondering where the interference is coming into the picture, since it sounds like he is confident in his writing-vocabulary in English.
Hi Renae,
ReplyDeleteIt is great to read a post where a teacher had an extended amount of experience with their student. It must help a bit having worked with your student for more than just this school year, as you've mentioned different aspects of his growth in language acquisition. I found it interesting that you described almost a "recession" in his ability to write in Spanish, as he has been a part of an English-dominant program for a year and a half now. Was there ever any effort through school or home to emphasis Spanish writing skills, or was there a pretty hard stance made on just English acquisition? From what we've learned about transferability of language skills, it would be a shame that he lost the opportunity to learn both languages through writing concurrently.
Sergio
Courtney- Thank you for reminding me. I forgot to discuss this students language levels in writing for both languages. In English, he is at about a 3-4. He lacks complexity and length in writing, though I attribute this to him being a first grader and not necessarily because of a language deficiency. In Spanish, he would score at about 2-3, because he had a difficult time generating full sentences and the writing was difficult to understand without him dictating.
ReplyDeleteIris- I wonder what he would be able to do with a dictation, too. Because he had difficulty sounding out the words from his own writing, I have my doubts that it would be much better in a dictation, mostly because he has only learned to spell using English phonetics.
Actually, this student only has oral exposure to Spanish. In English he has exposure in all of the domains, but only at school. This is how our students grow to have gaps in language as time goes on. He doesn’t learn to read and write in the first language he learned and has a much stronger connection to. Then, he has started to learn to read and write in a language that is not as strong, so he doesn’t have a lot of background knowledge to assist him in reading and writing. Such is the dilemma of ELLs in monolingual schools!
This leads me to what Sergio said and the struggle I have with teaching ELLs solely in English. Research shows overwhelming evidence that students should learn to read and write in their most dominant language, but at a monolingual school, we do not have the resources to teach our students in their L1, which puts them in a deficit that leads them to play catch up almost their whole school life. I try to encourage parents to do what they can at home, but I can’t expect them to know how to teach literacy in an appropriate fashion. All I can say is that I am happy to see the bilingual and DI programs growing in Madison, and I hope that one day, anyone who wants their child to become bilingual will have the opportunity to place the child in a bilingual program.