Analysis of Juliet as a Writer

Summary of stage

Juliet is, according to the writing stages put forth by Rubin and Carlin, somewhere between a semi phonetic and a phonetic writer.  They define the semi phonetic stage as when a student, “understand(s) that there is a relationship between letters and sounds, yet [is] not able to match all the sounds with the letters.”  (p 729). The phonetic monolingual English writer, on the other hand, “is able to match most of the phonetic sounds to letters.” According to the authors the monolingual Spanish writer at this stage of development begins to write one symbol for each letter, rather than one sound for each syllable. Carlin and Rubin also state that the bilingual writer can do both of these things at the phonetic stage, and additionally begins to notice that words are transcribed uniquely in either language.

Juliet demonstrated a fairly consistent letter: sound usage, and clearly knows that you can transcribe sounds with symbols. She still doesn’t hear difficult sounds (such as ‘coredo’ for ‘corriendo’), which Rubin and Carlin state to be typical in both the semi-phonetic and phonetic stages. In Spanish she is not using one sound for each syllable, but in English she is likely to represent sounds with graphemes that are not representative of the sounds she is hearing. The reason I don’t think Juliet is a transitional writer yet is that she still isn’t applying rules from either language to spelling patterns, even though she has some sight words (‘the’ and ‘is’) in English, and uses conventions more consistently in Spanish.

Self as a writer

Juliet sees writing as a way to notate stories drawn and told. She is very comfortable with the draw-speak-write pattern of interaction, which she clearly uses in class. She doesn’t see writing as a means for communication yet, however, in the sense that we may expand or edit ideas to make them clearer for the audience. She was more interested in working through each word than in working out the ideas or the sentence.  

Problem solving attempts at difficulty

After she speaks her story, Juliet will say the words slowly, syllable-by-syllable, to hear the sounds. She will write the sounds in order left to right, and tends to hear both consonants and vowels equally. 

She had trouble hearing or transcribing vowel sounds in English, and often added an ‘i’ for unclear reasons. In her first English writing she wrote all the words with phonetic beginning, middles, and ends, and when she got to the word ‘I’, she put down a lower-case ‘I’. But she stopped, saying, “Wait…that doesn’t sound right.” She changed her writing by scratching out the letter and putting down, “ai”. This is a closer approximation in the Spanish phonetic code of an English sounds for ‘I’.

Inter-linguistic transfer

Juliet relied primarily on the Spanish phonetic code to transcribe English words. She may not have been explicitly aware of the fact that Spanish and English words are written differently, but her oral development is such that she knew which sounds to transcribe. This again points towards a phonetic speller, with hints of semi-phonetic. Her spelling approximations definitely used code from across the languages. Her word-boundary confusions may be related more to the concept about print of spacing than the oral development of discreet words in either language. Her codes in both languages are phonetic and don’t yet rely on generalized rules or sight words, with the notable exception of ‘the’ and ‘is’.

Notes/  observations

Juliet is a very creative story teller, and very excited to someday ride a horse (just like mommy!). She loved her dog Cherry very much, and was sad when he had to go to the vet. She demonstrated no oral code-switching during our writing time in English, but did code switch during our Spanish writing time. Her code is definitely more active in Spanish for transcription than in English, and she has more concepts about print accessible to her in Spanish as well. When we discussed the ideas of ‘sentences’, she didn’t know what I meant, but when we talked about ‘frases’ she understood.

Juliet is in a Spanish-only literacy instruction DLI setting, and I think her primary code for writing is therefore Spanish. She has obviously been exposed to English text and print, however, because she has acquired some sight words in English.

Juliet's Writing Samples

This is Juliet's Spanish writing sample. We did an interactive write, to tell stories about how Juliet wants to ride a horse. I drew the horse :)

This is Juliet's first English writing sample. She drew a picture of her dog, Cherry, and wrote "My dog got sick. I was sad."

I noticed that she wasn't using spaces or punctuation, and I wasn't sure if she was consistently using the 'i' sound as a Spanish grapheme. I asked her to write more, and this time we rehearsed orally first. I helped put in space markers.

Juliet said, "Cherry was a cute pup." I wondered if there was some inter-language transfer going on, so I asked Juliet to do a dictated writing.

I drew a flower, and asked her to write the sentence, "The blue flower is pretty". Her attempt is above.

Juliet's Oral Language Development

Juliet is  a complicated case of a journey to bilingualism: her DLI program at school is sequential, where she is only instructed in Spanish literacy, but at home she receives support in both English and Spanish reading and writing, and has been developing speaking and listening skills in both languages her entire life. I think after hearing the deep integration of both languages into her social language that she is closer to a simultaneous bilingual than a sequential one.  While I think Juliet is developing in a multi-faceted way, analysis of her language revealed English to be “dominant”. She has more control and linguistic complexity in English than Spanish, and defaults to English to explain complicated ideas.

In the classroom, Juliet is likely to respond to people in the language she is addressed in. When her DLI classroom teacher spoke to her, she would answer in Spanish, even if the reply was, “No sé”. When addressed by a classmate in English she would respond as spoken to, except when she would attempt to translate to the other language on behalf of a peer. Twice while translating—once from English to Spanish, then again from Spanish to English—I observed Juliet code switch mid-translation (“She wants you to put down the marcadora”, and then, “dame the marker”).  These intra-sentential switches were common in Juliet’s language, with both peers and adults. It was witnessed in purely social language, but primarily in settings where one or more school-related vocabulary word was being used. In fact it was hard to get a “pure” language sample from Juliet. In every language sample (accept one)I took Juliet displayed code-switching, linguistic blending, copying or semantic extensions.  

The language sample I was able obtain almost entirely in English involved a lot of modeling in that language. After “switching” our English hat, Juliet describes her drawing with great linguistic complexity, varied sentence structure, and technical language related to the content area. She qualifies as a level 6 because of her Native English Language label (she is not qualified as an ESL student), and demonstrates abilities as such. While the one sample I found was free of linguistic transfer, most of the samples I obtained were peppered with individual Spanish words or phrases ("We don't [clean the room] because we have to, we do it so we can get un minuto mas. And if we do it, if we get to the alfombra, you have to give us un minuto mas"). This indicates to me that in some moments, Juliet has the Spanish vocabulary more close at hand than the English. I think this was especially true in talking about writing and classroom vocabulary (the colors of her drawing, for example).

Juliet’s Spanish language sample shows a willingness to use the language when vocabulary is readily available and she is in a familiar context (colors, animals, directions to do next). With me, she wasn’t as open to producing language in Spanish, but we only met a few weeks ago. With her peers, her classroom teacher, and especially in response to Spanish prompts, she is more likely to try out her Spanish. When she uses her Spanish she often copies syntax from English. She shows partial grasp of gender and plural agreement ("este" for "estes", "la palabras", "la osito"). She also used improper verb conjugation occasionally (tieno/tengo, esto/estoy). Her discourse patterns stayed fairly child-like and playful (lots of "ah-ha!' noises and such), but otherwise typically English-speaking and linear. She was likely to swap single phrases or words intra-sententially between languages, especially after hearing the vocabulary used in a model. In spontaneous discourse, Juliet would do the same ("En Rango. Es una, es una, es una movie."). She often repeats her words a few times before switching back to English, indicating that she is actively searching her Spanish vocabulary ("No es malo, pero es also, es also--como se dice mayor? El alcalde es malo, too.)

Her attempts only revealed one shot at an extended sentence, and her vocabulary stayed high-frequency and concrete. She was able to follow multi-step directions in Spanish but categorization was difficult. For these reasons I think of Juliet as a level 2, beginning, Spanish speaker.  Her language control did feel very fluent (again--when the complexity and vocab were well known, and with peers or trusted community members), however, leading me to believe that Juliet is on the edge of a level 3 language development level.

El Desarrollo de Juliet

I present my second focus student, Juliet (also a pseudonym). She's a gregarious, talkative, and very intelligent kindergartner whose first language is English. While she is raised in a home where English is the primary language she practices speaking in Spanish with her mother, a bilingual teacher in the district.

Both her home-practice and the quality of the student language in her DLI environment are apparent in listening to Juliet speak. She uses English and Spanish with confidence and often knows when to use each code without asking. She loves horses and playing with friends, is highly social, and adept and reading, writing, and math. Her inquisitive nature during Science and Social Studies might indicate a future in law or another field where problem solving and questioning are central.

El Desarrollo de Ana Litzy

Déjenme presentarles con Ana Litzy, mi estudiante de enfoque por la clase del desarrollo de lectoescritura bilingue. Así no se llama la niña de verdad, por supuesto, pero he eligido su apodo por alumnas de que me pone a recordar.

Es una estudiante bastante social y animada, a quien le gusta su clase de Kinder la *mayoria* del tiempo. A la Ana Litzy le encanta bailar y charlar, pero cuando llega el momento de leer o escribir a veces no quiere. No le costó mucho para aprender los sonidos de las letras en español, ni tampoco las sílabas, pero integrar la información visual con lo sintáctico y el significado le está costando un poco. En su primer año de la escuela, en este tercer cuarto del año, está leyendo un nivel 2 en la evaluación 'SPLAA'. Este dato le pone de nivel de caleficacióon 'progresando' por el momento.

Su programa de enseñanza es en una clase de doble inmersión, tipo 90/10; 90% de su dia instructional se presenta en español, y el 10% en inglés.