After analyzing Viri’s patterns in oral language, writing and reading in English and Spanish, I have been able to learn a lot about her as a bilingual learner. Viri is a simultaneous bilingual who has been exposed to both English and Spanish since birth, and she uses both languages to navigate her world. (Urow 2009) However, Viri is dominant in Spanish, which is the only language that is allowed to be spoken in her home. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss patterns that I saw in Viri’s oral language, writing and reading in both Spanish and English.
Viri’s oral language shows trends of code-switching in both Spanish and English. Comparing Viri to many of her peers, I believe that she very minimally code-switches. Viri tends to code-switch with expressions when she is speaking in Spanish such as “Vamos a hacer otro problema. Oh my God, it’s so hard. ¿Ok, que hago primero?” Viri also uses linguistic blending in Spanish such as “púchale.” This code-switching is minimal and usually occurs when she is speaking to an English-dominant classmate. Viri’s code-switching in English is different. In English, her code-switching tends to be because she is not sure of the name of an object; however her code-switching in English is more minimal. In her oral language in English, however, Viri also mixes up the syntax of Spanish with English. She says things like “Do you have shoes purple?” The way that Viri uses code-switching in both English and Spanish is evidence of how she uses both languages to help explore her world and make sense of language. (Urow, 2009) Viri’s linguistic complexity, vocabulary usage and language control are all more dominant in Spanish. (WIDA Consortium)
Writing for Viri can be a struggle in both Spanish and English. After analyzing her writing in both languages, I noticed that in both languages she uses consonants and vowels to write new words. Unlike her monolingual peers who may use mostly consonants or mostly vowels to represent sounds in their writing, Viri uses both to navigate in her writing of new words. (Rubin and Carlan, 2005) According to Gentry’s stages of writing, Viri is at the phonetic stage in both languages. However, her writing looks very different in each language. While in Spanish Viri has many ideas for writing and writes long stories with very circular writing organization, in English, Viri has not had any formal writing instruction and tends to write simple one phrase stories.
On pattern between her writing in Spanish and English is that Viri is able to match most of the phonetic sounds to letters. She is “able to segment words into their individual sounds and represent most of those sounds with letters.” (Rubin and Carlan, 2005 pg. 732) Her abilities are very consistent with a bilingual learner at the phonetic stage. Another pattern that she shares between languages is that she leaves out “silent letters.” However, Viri also leaves out some letters that are not silent but are difficult-to-hear. For example, Viri leaves out the “h” in “hoy” and the “h” in “hermana.” Other difficult-to-hear sounds that Viri leaves out in Spanish are words such as leaving out the “n” in “pintamos” and the “n” in “grande.” In English, Viri also leaves out sounds that are typical for Spanish dominant writers. These include the sounds of “th” in “the” (writing a “d” instead) and the “t” in “water.”
It is important to remember that Viri has not had any formal writing instruction in English. Therefore, she definitely uses her knowledge of L1 spellings and applies them to L2 words. For example, she writes “ai” for “I,” “en” for “in” and “lai” for “like.” She also records some sounds with little knowledge of the language code. This includes things like “fechin” for “fishing” and “waroho” for “water.” Viri’s pattern of leaving out some sounds but representing most of the sounds in a word is consistent across both languages. I believe that with more writing instruction and time to grow as a writer in Spanish, she will be able to represent even more sounds in her writing and begin to use the “monster letters” (Escamilla, 1999) with more expertise. By the time Viri begins formal writing instruction in English, I believe that she will have many skills of a good writer that will transfer into her English writing.
According to Viri, a good reader is someone who looks at the words and the pictures on a page and reads them. It was difficult to see clear patterns between her Spanish and English reading because she has had no formal literacy instruction in English and is a struggling reader in her dominant language of Spanish. One pattern that I do see is Viri’s dependency on visual cues. She tends to rely heavily on the pictures when she reads in Spanish and she did the same when I asked her to read to me in English. Another pattern would be her knowledge of Concepts About Print. (Escamilla, Andrade, Basutro, Ruiz) She is able to translate what she knows about Concepts about Print from Spanish to English.
In Spanish, Viri tends to struggle with letter reversals such as “ay” for “ya” and “al” for “la.” However, in the few words that she read to me in English, I did not see that pattern. Although when Viri writes in English she uses vowel sounds from Spanish in her writing, does not read the same way. In fact, while she doesn’t like to try to read words that she is not sure about in English, the words that she does read are not read using her understanding of letter sounds in Spanish, but rather what she knows already about sight words in English.
Viri’s language development definitely has an effect on her reading in writing in both her dominant language of Spanish and in English. It is not surprising that Viri’s reading and writing are stronger in her dominant language of Spanish. However, we must also consider the fact that she has only had formal literacy instruction in Spanish. Across all three domains in Spanish, Viri shows her language dominance. However, she also shows signs of code-switching, linguistic blending and the use of consonants and vowels in her writing of new words which shows that while she is Spanish-dominant, Viri uses her knowledge of English to help navigate across all domains. Primarily in Viri’s writing in English, she clearly uses her knowledge of Spanish to help her make sense of writing. She uses vowel sounds from Spanish to help write words in English and other times her lack of knowledge of the language code shows through in her spelling.
It has been very interesting to see the patterns within all three domains in Viri’s language development. She shows many patterns consistent with bilingual learners and tends to navigate her world using her knowledge of both Spanish and English.
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