Writing Analysis

Guada writes a lot, both in Spanish and English. At home, she writes stories and poems, and has talked about wanting to become a writer.


Everyday, the students start with a free write for 5 minutes. Normally, Guada writes in English. This week I asked her to write two different entries in Spanish so I could see what her Spanish looked like. Here are some things I found about her writing.


 In English, she makes many spelling errors that are common among developing language learners. (tink for Think, bicause for because). Other spelling errors she makes too but inconsistently. In one writing sample she writes "and" "anh", but in others she writes it correctly. "hwo" represents "who," although again, it is inconsistently used. 


According to the Rubin/Carlan stages of writing, I believe Guada's writing in English is in the phonetic stage. She makes some erros repeatedly and  doesn't always include silent letters, and a lot of basic words are still spelled incorrectly. She inconsistently uses correct spelling, so I believe that she is starting to reach towards the transitional stage in English.  Her tendency to write words as phonetically as possible is a clear transfer from her knowledge about spelling in Spanish. 

 Syntaxtically, she makes some erros that are transfer from Spanish. ("having years", or "to do fat" for "become fat") Other times, she omits subjects (is for "it is"). There is clearly transfer when she says "the person hwo like to see sports in the tv", She transfers the verb mirar and uses it literally, and forgets the inflection on the verb like. On top of that she confuses the preposition in/on in English. This is especially common for speakers of Spanish with limited English. 

 She rarely code switches in her writing in English. If she can not find the vocabulary word, she will often ask for it, or she will simply use circumlocution to get around it. (Often using the phrase "the thing that...") When Guada can not find the correct vocabulary, she can still be understood. In her English writing she wrote "like when you have 4 or 5 years or up" instead of "more," and "5 or down" that meant "5 or less."

In Spanish, she makes common mistakes for in grammar and spelling. She confuses por/para, and does not include the letter H in her writing, almost at all. She also intermixes b's and v's in her writing. These are common errors for a student her age, and aren't unique to her English language learning. Her spelling approximations in Spanish are much closer to the correct spelling than when she approximates in English. Because of this, I believe she is in the transitional phase of writing in Spanish. 


Guada occasionally code-switches. She was writing about "being as free as a bird" and wrote " si fuera free..." in her sentence, although early in the same writing piece she used the word "libre." He

She writes a lot, and her ideas are communicated, although not with academic vocabulary. Just as the Montaño-Harmon article stated about discourse patterns, Guada has a lot of run-on sentences, both in Spanish and English. Her Spanish sentences tend to be longer, and veer off on to related topics. However, she does not make this transition smoothly. Her writing lacks transitional phrases in both Spanish and English. 


Guada does not receive any instruction in Spanish, except for instructions about what to do, or explanations in Spanish from me or another BRS. I continue to struggle with where to go from here. I believe the research that she should be developing both her language skills to better her literacy but our schedule does not allow her to get academic reading in English and Spanish for Spanish speakers.


I recently gave her a reading assessment called Achieve 3000. It is a leveled computer program that will increase in difficulty if you answer correctly, or decrease difficulty if you do not. What was really surprising to me was that although her writing in Spanish is in the transitional phase, her reading (only according to this test) is "pre literate."  I am not very familiar with the test, and would like to sit down with Guada one day to get a better sense of her reading in Spanish. It's puzzling to me to think she can be pre-literate in reading and be in a transitional phase in writing. Because I cannot count on this test to be the only source of the measurement of her abilities, I am spending time with her next week reading in Spanish one-on-one to assess it myself as well.