José's Biliteracy Development

Reflection of José’s biliteracy development

It has been a pleasure to work more closely with José over the past month.  His positive attitude towards his academics and willingness to participate in my various assessments have made this project very enjoyable for me.  José fits under the category of a sequential bilingual student according to Beeman’s working definition of a language learner who does not begin to learn another language until between the ages of 3 and 7 (José began learning English in Kindergarten at age 5).  Across all domains, I see a bilingual student who is constantly improving his academic English abilities while his academic Spanish abilities slowly atrophy.  I want to emphasize slowly because I think Jose’s Spanish proficiency is still very high. 

However, in our conversation José showed the ease with which he can maneuver between Spanish and English, yet I noticed more instances of code-switching (“¿Cómo se dice Language Arts?”, “Estamos usando funtions”)  and linguistic blending (“tenemos que hacer nuestro págrafos del cuento….”)  when speaking Spanish.  Interestingly, several other ELLs from my class who speak Spanish did not know the Spanish word for paragraphs, either. 

José’s writing patterns reflect those of a student who has had more practice with English writing than Spanish.  Although Jose’s tendency to write long, clause-heavy sentences may be attributed to the influence of Spanish discourse patterns, it is difficult to say that this is the only reason.  I have many native English-speaking students who display this same tendency in their writing.  Likewise, José’s frequent misspelling of English homophones is not necessarily due to Spanish transfer.  In fact, I would argue that his writing sample in Spanish indicates more English language transfer.  While his English misspellings were mainly found in homophones (e.g. there in place of their), his misspellings in Spanish were often replacing “c’s” with “q’s” as in quando, and omitting “h’s” as in estoy aciendo algo.  (As one of my classmates pointed out in a comment on one of my previous blog posts, this might not be alarming as these confusing pairs of letters and accent marks are difficult for many Spanish-speaking writers.)  His Spanish writing sample even showed signs of transfer in syntax and discourse patterns from English as in “Por ejemplo quando estoy en un lugar aciendo algo, de repente estoy en otro lugar que nunca e estado en.”  Again, these examples lead me to believe that José’s daily use of English for academic purposes, such as writing, has begun to have more influence on his Spanish abilities than vice versa.  It should be noted, too, that the spelling and placements of accents in Spanish

Lastly, José’s reading fluency and comprehension activity that we carried out indicated to me that, although he was very comfortable in both languages, his Spanish reading fluency was not up to par with his English ability.  José read and understood the passages we read very well in both languages but his Spanish reading pace and fluency were noticeably slower and more choppy than when he read in English.  José told me that he had no language of preference when reading but did admit that he reads much more often in English and that his Spanish reading material is limited to children’s books at his aunt’s house.  In this case his reading abilities do not completely surprise me, as many would agree that for languages, if you don’t use them, you lose them.

Instructional Plan

Kim Potowski mentions that many children of recent immigrants to the U.S. may struggle with the academic aspects of Spanish since they are educated in English-only environments.  The challenge with these students, as well as José is now to transfer his academic skills in English to Spanish.  Based on my earlier analysis of José’s bilingual proficiencies in English and Spanish, I would recommend formal, content-based reading and writing instruction for José in Spanish along with continued literacy development in English.  José already has a solid base in both languages, but because he is living in an increasingly English-only academic environment, he would be an excellent candidate for a program that focused on material presented in Spanish. This content-based instruction would have the duel objectives of teaching José content while developing his Spanish literacy skills.  During this instruction, texts must be authentic, not simple translations, and expectations for writing in Spanish must be made with specific patterns in Spanish discourse in mind.  As Kathy Escamilla notes, English writing rubrics are made for English writing and cannot always be used as guidelines for Spanish writing. 

To support José’s development of Spanish, I spoke with my teammates I work with at Sherman and we rearranged our reading groups.  We placed José and 5 other native Spanish speakers in a group and began a book in Spanish.  I include reaction, essay, and project-based writing in this reading group as well as oral discussions on the issues presented in our book or that arise from student interactions.  Although our group meets for an insufficient 40 minutes per day, I feel that this is better than the All-English model that we were using previously.  With this class, the students now have time to practice and improve their literacy skills in their native languages while also being encouraged to speak Spanish.

Although I believe this is a good starting point, several issues still need to be worked out.  First, I am realizing that not all of my native Spanish speakers are as strong of readers as José.  Planning an appropriate text for a group with diverse reading levels is not a new dilemma by any means, but an issue nonetheless.  Second, many of the students in this group have become very self-conscious of using Spanish as they have become accustomed to their All-English school environment.  Even though we are in a separate room, many have expressed reservations of using Spanish in a school context.  This gets at the crux of the problem of our English-dominant schools and is not easy to resolve.  I’ve been trying to build up their confidence and pride in using their native languages, but we’re still not to the point of everyone embracing this philosophy.  Finally, the choice of text has presented itself as a deal breaker.  Originally, I chose a text by a Mexican-American author whose first language, and the language of the book, was in Spanish.  I felt that this text was authentic in its language usage and the content – growing up in California of immigrant parents.  To my surprise, the students were completely uninterested in reading this novel and instead pressured me into reading a translated version of Hunger Games.  This is not ideal but at least they have a genuine interest (as most middle schoolers following popular trends do).

We are still in the early stages of trying out the modified reading groups.  I’m hopeful that with time the students will gain more confidence and willingness to discuss, read, and write in Spanish.  Still, I wonder if this will be enough to make a measureable difference in José’s and the other students’ academic Spanish skills.  They have been indoctrinated into a monolingual schooling system for the majority, if not the entirety of their school-age years, and seem to be apathetic towards the development of their first language.  More could certainly be done and more is being planned for the future.  My school is hoping to start its own DLI program in the next couple years that would involve a more extensive and comprehensive Spanish language curriculum.  With my current students, however, if they are able to take away from this class that their first language is valued within our school, I believe that the reading class can be seen as a small victory.

José's Writing

José read to me last week from two separate fiction novels:  Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers (English version) and Hoyos by Louis Sachar (Spanish version).  Given that José is an 8^th grader who is literate in both languages, I chose to focus my analysis of his reading on his concept as a reader, his comprehension, his fluency, and his strategic behavior.  In terms of formal Reading assessments, his English score from this fall’s SRI is 931, his 2011 ACCESS reading score is a 4.9, and his 7^th grade WKCE reading score is a 3. 

Child as a Reader

When I asked José in which language he prefers to read I was surprised by his immediate response that either one was fine with him.  After hearing him read and noticing that his English reading fluency was much greater, I expected him to say that he preferred English.  He did admit that he reads more frequently in English but said that if he were given two options on a book (textbook or novel) he would read either one readily.   He told me that the majority of the reading he does in Spanish is done at home or at his aunt’s house.  His aunt runs a daycare business and José helps her out in the summer an often reads children’s books in Spanish to the other kids.  I was excited to hear that he gets additional reading practice over the summer, especially since he is modeling these habits to younger kids!  However, this also speaks of the need to provide students like José access to more challenging texts in their home languages.

Fluency and Strategic behavior

José is a student who is thorough with his work and takes extra time to complete assignments.  His reading behavior reflects this work ethic.  He does not rush through a text but instead is very deliberate to read/pronounce each word honor punctuation marks.  He exhibits this thoroughness when reading in both English and Spanish but reads at a noticeably slower pace in Spanish.  His Spanish reading is also choppier as he seems to take more effort in decoding.  I noticed that he uses a re-reading strategy in both languages when coming across a new word or to clarify the meaning of a sentence with multiple clauses.  In Spanish, this happened more often with single words such as arrancó  and hombro (which he pronounced arcotró  and  hombre) and in English with longer sentences that contained multiple commas.  My hypothesis is that his reading in Spanish is choppier due to fewer opportunities to practice - he has been in an all-English academic setting since Kindergarten.

Comprehension

Despite some of Jose’s difficulties in decoding with Spanish texts he still was able to accurately answer comprehension questions.  He was also able to give me longer, coherent responses to some of the more open-ended questions that I asked.  His responses to the questions about the English text were slightly less accurate but he was less familiar with this text and greater context around the selected text was necessary to expect accurate answers.  He showed solid understanding of what he had read when asked more open-ended questions. 

Writing Assessment

Assessment of José’s writing in English and Spanish:

I assessed two samples of José’s writing:  One was a rough draft of  a paper he wrote for his language arts class.  In this writing, José came up with his own “traditional story” to compose.  The story was to take place many years ago and creatively describe why a certain natural phenomenon exists in the present, similar to a folktale or a fable.  In José’s Spanish writing sample he details a recurring dream that he remembers vividly.  The Spanish writing sample was done after school in about a half hour while the English sample was a rough draft that he spent much more time composing.

Looking at his writing samples, I would place José in the Conventional Stage of English writing as a few words were misspelled, possibly due to fact that they had multiple homophones (e.g. use of their in place of there, use of your in place of you’re) and certain verb tenses were not consistent (e.g. If your(you were) close you can(could) see that their(they were) basically hard rock formed into a slopy(sloppy) circul(circle)).  In terms of discourse patterns, José does tend to write long sentences using word such as because to extend thoughts.  This might be evidence of transfer from the longer sentence patterns in Spanish discourse.  Overall, his writing in English was generally correct and included complex sentence structures. 

José’s writing in the Spanish sample contained many more errors due to difficult letter-sound relationships (e.g. g/j, silent ‘h’, q/c, b/v) and negative transfer from his English language knowledge.  For example, he often spelled words such as cuando as quando, omitted the ‘h’ from words such as he, haciendo, hacia, and hasta, switched the ‘g’ and ‘j’ in dige and enogaron, exchanged the ‘b’ for ‘v’ in iva, and switched the ‘z’ for ‘s’ in ise and poso. 

José’s Spanish writing also showed signs of transfer from his English language in syntax and in discourse patterns.  In one sentence he writes, Por ejemplo quando estoy en un lugar aciendo algo, de repente estoy en otro lugar que nunca e estado en.   José also chose to use the preterit form of ‘estar’ when describing a series of events instead of the imperfect ‘estaba’: Despues estuve yo caminando acia la puerta que aparesio en la oscuridad y entre a una selva tropica. 

José seems to fit the mold of a native Spanish speaker who has been educated in an English-dominant school setting with fewer opportunities to develop his writing in Spanish.  Although his discourse is descriptive and easy to follow in Spanish as well as English, he uses a linear style of writing in Spanish to describe the chain of events that occurred in his dream.  He has a clear beginning (Quando me duermo, yo sueño varaias cosas que en realidad no le entiendo), then proceeds by giving a clear example followed by supporting sentences describing the dream.  Often, José will begin a sentence with Quando or Despues to enumerate the series of events.  He does not go off on related tangents, as one might expect with a Spanish-dominant style of discourse, but sticks to the main point of the dream to show a clear connection to his opening line.  Due the these observations, I would rate José as being in the transitional stage of writing but at risk for developing more discourse and spelling habits from his increasing use of English and decreasing use of Spanish.

José's Oral Language Assessment

José’s Oral Language:

José and I had a nice conversation in Spanish and in English last week after school.  As I mentioned before, José is a bright kid who often stays after school with a few of his classmates to complete assignments and take advantage of his classmates’ and teachers’ help. 

José told me that he began school in the United States at Sandburg Elementary as a kindergartener but before that had lived in Mexico and spoken only Spanish.  Because he was introduced to English after the age of 3 and before 7, José fits under the category of a sequential bilingual student according to Beeman’s working definition.  Although I normally interact with José in English, lately I have been observing him use more Spanish in the classroom due the recent arrival of a student from Colombia who has very minimal English proficiency.  José has been kind to assist the new student in many of their classes. 

In terms of his ACCESS scores, he has scored between 4.8 and 6 on the “oral” and “speaking” sections dating back to 2006.  These scores indicate to me the speed at which he picked up oral language abilities in English and also the reliability of the ACCESS speaking test – there are several years where he scored a 6 one year and then a 5.2 the next.

As José and I spoke, I was impressed by his ability to converse in both languages very fluently and articulately.  He was able to clearly separate the two languages with minimal “interference” from either one.  The 8^th graders are in the process of selecting courses for their first year of high school so our conversation naturally hovered around this topic.  I found it interesting that there were several instances of code-switching when he was speaking in Spanish but only one discernable miscue when speaking in English.  As I was asking him about what a normal day in Algebra class looked like, José code-switched to English when saying the word “function”.  Apparently, he was used to seeing and using this word in English but not it’s cognate in Spanish.  Similarly, he asked me “¿Cómo se dice Language Arts? When our conversation veered towards the classes he did not enjoy.  One other interesting detail was that he used a linguistic blend when speaking about language arts.  At one point he said, “tenemos que hacer nuestro págrafos del cuento….”

These examples of code-switching and linguistic blending indicate the dominating effect of English on his school life.  It also made me realize that I should have prepared for a conversation in both languages that touched on bases other than school.  If I had asked him questions about his home life I might have found that he had an easier time discussing this topic in Spanish as this is the primary language he uses at home.

Our conversation in English centered around some of his class selections for the coming year and also some of the activities he does at home to keep himself occupied.  Besides learning that he got in trouble a few years ago for playing with fire I found that he spoke like a regular 8^th grader.  His language skills were definitely more “social” than “academic” (e.g. often used “cuz…” and “we play around…”) which I would say reflects the majority of the 8^th grade population at my school.  Some words were slurred/blended together but this seems to be his style of speaking in both languages.  One final note that I made was his inability to come up with the word for “cabinet” in English or in Spanish.  I don’t believe this had to do with any negative transfer or interference, but merely forgetting a word.

Overall, José is willing and able to communicate very effectively in English and in Spanish.  At school, he prefers to speak English because it is the lingua franca and also because his friends use this language – he tends to hang around students who don’t speak Spanish.  With the arrival of our new student from Colombia, José is using Spanish more frequently but does not appear to go out of his way to use his Spanish abilities.

According to the assessment rubrics, I would place José at a level 5 for his English and Spanish proficiency.  He was able to use a variety of sentence lengths and technical and colloquial vocabulary when conversing in both languages.  He is not a loud, outgoing student so he gets less practice speaking in class than some of his peers, but one on one, he is at least “approaching” his English proficient peers in terms of his comprehensibility and fluency.  In Spanish as well, he appears to be as proficient as other Spanish speakers.  My only concern with José is that the English-dominant context of his education experience is leading him down a path where his Spanish abilities are devalued.  This may lower his academic language skills in Spanish – as I found as he code-switched several times back into English as we discussed school-related topics. 

Les presento a José

El estudiante bilingüe con quien voy a trabajar se llama José.  Este estudiante asiste a la escuela Sherman y está en el octavo grado.  El modelo escolar en Sherman es uno en que todos los alumnos (los que tienen ciertas necesidades adicionales, los que hablan otro idioma aparte de inglés, y los de la educación regular) aprenden juntos de la instrucción de tres maestros.  Aunque hay varios hispanohablantes en su clase, la lengua de instrucción es el inglés.  Este es su tercer año en la escuela de Sherman.  Antes, asistía a Sandburg, Glendale, Lincoln, y Midvale.

José es un buen estudiante; normalmente se queda después de clases para hacer su tarea en nuestro salon.  Aquí ayuda a sus compañeros con las deberes de matemáticas y ciencias y a veces pide ayuda de sus maestros en la escritura.  Aparte de las clases escolares, a él le gusta la clase de computadoras y jugar al fútbol.  En totalidad, José es un buen estudiante y un chico muy amable.

Hey!

First blog ever!