Bilingual spelling patterns in middle school: it is more than transfer

Abstract

This study examined the Spanish and English spelling patterns of bilingual adolescents, including the cross-linguistic effects of each language, by applying a fine-grained measure to the differences in spelling in naturalistic writing. Spelling errors were taken from narrative and expository writing samples provided by 20 Spanish-English bilingual adolescents (n = 160). Errors were coded by categories (phonological, orthographic, and morphological) and specific linguistic features affected and then analyzed by language and genre. Descriptive analyses noted similarities and differences among error patterns in both languages as well as language transfer (i.e., borrowings and code-switching). Statistical analyses revealed language differences in proportions of misspellings across linguistic categories. More fine-grained analyses indicated linguistic feature patterns that were shared across languages and unique to each language. Finally, borrowing, while infrequent, was noted more frequently in English compositions. This investigation appears to demonstrate that spelling, when approached as both a cognitive and linguistic activity, is complex since multiple knowledge systems must be coordinated. The use of triple word form theory to analyze misspellings in emerging bilingual writers suggests that discerning patterns of misspellings in each language provides more insight than does transfer alone into the extent that phonology, orthography, and morphology are becoming unified.

Spelling It Out, One por Uno: Patterns of Emergent Bilinguals in a Dual Language Classroom

“…Unlike Bahr et al. (), Howard and her colleagues found that cross‐linguistic spelling errors were nonexistent by fourth grade. Spelling errors made at an early age had no effect on the students’ literacy development beyond second grade.…”

“…In a comparison of dual language programs, Howard et al (2012) concluded that overall biliteracy is not dependent on a person's ability to spell correctly in the early years of development. Unlike Bahr et al (2015), Howard and her colleagues found that cross-linguistic spelling errors were nonexistent by fourth grade. Spelling errors made at an early age had no effect on the students' literacy development beyond second grade.…”

“…Although more research has been conducted on the development of orthography in a monolingual context, transitional bilingual spelling progression has been under the microscope as well (Bahr et al., ; Goodrich et al., ).…”

“…Examples of contrastive vowels are defferent for different or fonny in lieu of funny; consonant examples include lebs for lives, gi for he, and lero for little. Bahr, Silliman, Danzak, and Wilkinson (2015) examined the writing of 20 middle school ELs in Florida and discovered six orthographic features in their writings: inconsistent word boundaries (e.g., usedto for used to), lack of capitalization of proper nouns, silent letter omission (were for where), phonemic borrowing (mader for mother), overgeneralization of grapheme doubling (fellt for felt), and unstressed vowel errors (greatist for greatest). The researchers problematize the single notion of transfer as being more than a mere grapheme-phoneme correspondence issue.…”

“…Although more research has been conducted on the development of orthography in a monolingual context, transitional bilingual spelling progression has been under the microscope as well (Bahr et al, 2015;Goodrich et al, 2016). Escamilla et al (2014) propose drawing from the literacy instruction that has been demonstrated to be effective in Mexico and other Latin American countries to understand how instruction matched to the language may influence emergent bilinguals' spelling development.…”