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.