The Integration of Lexical, Syntactic, and Discourse Features in Bilingual Adolescents' Writing: An Exploratory Approach

Abstract

Similar results across languages implied the potential transfer of writing skills. Overall, students appeared to apply a knowledge-telling strategy to writing rather than strategically planning, composing, and revising their writing. Finally, outcomes highlighted the synergistic relationships among linguistic levels in text composition, indicating a need to address the interaction of vocabulary, morphosyntax, and text-level structures in the instruction and assessment of ELL writing.

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

“…Moreover, the level of academic language knowledge needed for grade-level achievement requires an average of five to seven years to attain (Cummins 2013). Previous study on the bilingual writing of this group of students (Danzak 2011) strongly suggested that the lexical, syntactic, and discourse aspects of the academic register in both languages were less well developed, whether they were previously educated in the USA or elsewhere. A question, which merits more refined instructional research to resolve, is whether this gap in the academic register represents differences from monolinguals in how bilinguals manage more complex language and literacy learning, as Geva and Farnia (2012) suggest, in combination with inadequate experience in the analysis and synthesis of word relations in both Spanish and English.…”

“…The data in this study were drawn from a larger, mixed methods investigation of the bilingual writing of Spanish-speaking English learners in middle school (Danzak 2011). For the current inquiry, the students' writing samples were evaluated for spelling error patterns and compared across languages.…”

“…Given the need for more information on spelling in bilinguals, especially older students, an existing database of 160 naturalistic Spanish and English writing samples from bilingual adolescents was selected for analysis (Danzak 2011). These students were asked to produce narrative and expository texts on four different topics in both Spanish and English.…”

“…This presents unique challenges as sequential bilingual students confront the task of mastering the language of instruction. One obstacle to mastery may be insufficient metalinguistic sensitivity to word relations in the first language, much less the second language (see Danzak 2011). If phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness is not automatized at some level in the first language, then this processing restriction may be reflected in the nature of the misspellings in the second language.…”

Finding Diego: A Bilingual Student Integrates School, Language, and Identity

“…Diego participated in a prior mixedmethods study of bilingual narrative and expository writing of Spanish-speaking ELs that took place in his ESOL classroom (Danzak, 2011b(Danzak, , 2011c. Diego was among six of 20 participants randomly selected to serve as focal students in this study.…”