Supporting the Writing Development of Emergent Bilingual Children: Universal and Language‐Specific Approaches

Abstract

Emergent bilingual children express their ideas in written language through meaningful marks on a page by leveraging their oral language and print focused skills from home and school languages. Because writing is a complex task, particularly for children learning more than one language, teachers must make decisions about how they guide children through the writing process and how they respond in the moment to children’s writing ideas or actions. This article addresses the early writing environments and instructional practices needed to meet the needs of emergent bilingual writers. We examine how universal and language specific oral to written connections can be utilized in every day classroom interactions to support emergent bilingual children’s meaning and print based writing skills. Detailed examples of modeling and scaffolding practices that support preschool children’s writing development are described. Early writing, emergent bilinguals, early literacy, teacher practice, dual language learners, modeling, scaffolding.

Supporting Emergent Writing in Preschool Classrooms: Results of a Professional Development Program

“…Preschoolers also come to appreciate different functions and genres of print and can apply this knowledge in dramatic play [11]. Emergent writing acquisition shows similar patterns for mono-and dual language learners, across different languages, and even across writing systems [13,14].…”