Oral Development

Guada is a sequential bilingual student. She is clearly Spanish dominant. She has told me several times that although she can speak more in English, she prefers not to for the fear of making a mistake. I have constantly encouraged her with my stories of learning Spanish and confirmed to her that I continually make mistakes when I speak to her in English. Although, that has yet to help her feel more comfortable.

Guada clearly has linguistic transfer from Spanish to English. Sometimes, it is good, because it gives her vocabulary. Examples of this, were evident when she spoke of the book, Touching Spirit Bear, she mentioned the similarities between atacar and attack, injections and inyecciones . However, in her speech, she uses copying from Spanish to English. Sometimes it causes her to incorrectly assume similarities like “having hunger.” With terms that she has learned only in English, she will code switch into English, and then back into Spanish. For example, she will say, “ Tengo maestras que hablan  español en la clase de Social Studies y Language Arts.” This is an example of inter-sentential code switching.
She rarely uses linguistic blending, she more often switches directly into Spanish when she struggles to find the vocabulary in English.  A lot of times, even when I speak to her in English, she will respond in Spanish.
Although she doesn't have the linguistic ability to use longer sentences that are more detailed and have flowery lexical terms, she does use this speech pattern in Spanish.
Guada feels very comfortable speaking Spanish. We also have many Spanish speaking students, with whom she is close friends. So, she feels very comfortable speaking Spanish, and although her English is quite limited compared to most students, she does not feel ostracized by her language skills.
While it is good for her not to feel a high anxiety at school, she also can get by with limited English because she is still able to get her needs met without speaking much English. Most of her close friends are Spanish speakers, and she says that they “sometimes” speak in English, but “mostly” speak in Spanish.
When I asked her who she speaks to in English, she names a few classmates that don’t speak Spanish. When she wants to talk to them, she speaks in English.
In English, Guada’s language development is at the beginning. She can answer questions with short phrases.  “I like to read in English.” She can restate short stories, although sometimes she lacks the correct verb tense. ( He is hungry vs. He was hungry.) She can talk about her classes and what is easy and difficult in school, but has a hard time discussing academic topics. When discussing Touching Spirit Bear, she could retell a short piece of what happened to the protagonist when he was attacked by a bear, but didn’t know why the protagonist was on the island in the first place.

In Spanish, she has little problem communicating her thoughts in a sophisticated way. I would place her at an “Expanding” level, as she continues to learn academic vocabulary.
She can explain things that have happened ( a story about a cousin who told her not to watch telenovelas), or make predictions about what will happen in a story very easily in Spanish. Often, even when a text is in English, she is able to discuss it in Spanish, using more detailed, specific language than she currently is able to do in English.