Elizabeth's Spanish Writing Sample

Elizabeth's Writing Analysis

Using Rubin and Carlan's stages of writing development to assess Elizabeth, I can confidently say that in both Spanish and English, Elizabeth is at the conventional stage. At this stage, students’ writing is generally correct and their vocabulary and sentences structure is more complex. As an 11^th grader, she is fully literate in the English language and has fully developed her abilities as an English writer. Since 7^th grade, she has transferred these abilities to Spanish. As a sequential bilingual, Elizabeth relied on her solid base in her native language to develop literacy in Spanish later in life.

In both languages, Elizabeth can convey a message and understands that the purpose of writing is to communicate information to others. Her language structures are much more complex in English than in Spanish due to the training she has received through the years. Her education has been primarily in the English language reinforcing the usage of English language conventions. For instance in her English sample she wrote “Upon marriage they settled upon a farm that my Grandpa had owned, and looked to start a family and the rest of their lives together, giving birth to my brother Nate just 4 years later.” In Spanish, just like in English, she takes risks with more complex grammatical and syntactical sentences requiring, for instance, the correct use of the preterit and imperfect as exemplified by the following sentence: “Europa tenía muchos caracteristicas y ventajes naturales que ponían Europa con una avance encima de los Americas, y porque de eso, Europa conquistó y se desarrolló mas rapido de las Americas.” In terms of Elizabeth’s discourse, not differently from other native English students, I will argue that her organizational patterns tend to follow the linear, deductive, enumerative composition. This type of organizational pattern is predominant in her English sample and it permeates her Spanish writing as well. Interestingly enough, I may also argue that her writing in English might have been influenced by her Spanish. In her English sample, she sometimes writes long sentences and, on occasion, she uses poetic language and flexible sentence structures which are used more prominently in Spanish as in the following example “The wedding was set for a snowy October day, 35 years ago, with the bride dressed in white and the groomsmen clad in brown and peach tuxes.” However, for the most part, her English writing follows the linear organizational pattern to highlight logical relationship between ideas.

Elizabeth writing sample gives me an idea of how confident and proficient she is in her native language. Following the WIDA rubric for writing, I can say that Elizabeth uses a variety of sentence lengths of varying linguistic complexity and precise vocabulary. Moreover, her ideas are well-organized through tight cohesion and organization. In Spanish, I believe that Elizabeth’s writing is at level 3, at a developing stage similar to her speaking level. She uses simple and expanded sentences that show emerging complexity to provide details such as “Con mucho comida, los personas de Europa podían tener excelente comida, y desarrollaban permanente lugares para viviendo.” Regarding her vocabulary, she uses general and some technical language. For instance, in her Spanish sample, she writes using historical facts and related vocabulary previously discussed in class. Nevertheless, the lack of needed vocabulary is sometimes evident for instance when instead of saying “los europeos” she prefers to stick to the words she is most familiar with such as “las personas de europa”. In terms of language control, Elizabeth is at a developing stage since generally her writing is comprehensible, but at times, meaning may be impeded by errors when attempting to produce more complex text as in this case “Con un buen inmunidad y mucho comida mas personas podían sobrevivir, cual creaban mas ideas buenas y mas technología avanzada para Europa” instead of “la inmunidad de los europeos y el excedente de comida acrecentaba la cantidad de personas que podían sobrevivir lo cual resultaba en la producción de mejores ideas y más tecnología avanzada”.  

Regarding Elizabeth’s spelling, I did notice some cases of spelling approximations reflecting cross-language transfer. Since Elizabeth’s dominant language is English, she uses the English code to spell Spanish words (and not vice versa). She did this in the case of writing “technología” for “tecnología”, and “Europe” for “Europa.” She also had an instance of confusion of word boundaries when she wrote “porque” instead of “por qué” (though this may also be a semantic confusion between the two expressions). Her Spanish writing sample had surprisingly fewer code-switching examples when compared to her speaking. This might be because of the thought process involved in writing when compared to speaking. It seems as if she was able to remain consistent in the usage of Spanish given more time to process and use other resources such as dictionaries to fill in the gaps in her vocabulary. I did not observe linguistic blending or semantic expressions. However, I did notice several instances of copying. She used capital letters and punctuation correctly for the most part, expect when placing a comma in front of the connecting  word “y” which is more commonly used in English as in the following sentence “Con mucho comida, los personas de Europa podían tener excelente comida, y desarrollaban permanente lugares para viviendo”. Another example of copying in punctuation includes the lack of the initial question mark that is required in Spanish and non-existent in English. I also observed fewer instances of grammatical errors due to lack of subject-verb agreement that were more prevalent in her speaking, but I did notice more instances of lack of article-noun-adjective agreement. Examples of lack of agreement include “un buen inmunidad,” “mucho comida,” “los personas” and “una tiempo larga.” A final example of copying related to syntax includes the usage of a gerund after a preposition instead of an infinitive after a preposition as it is the norm in Spanish. For instance Elizabeth wrote “lugares para viviviendo” (incorrect) instead of “lugares para vivir”.

Elizabeth clearly demonstrates a stronger ability to write in English due to receiving most of her education in this language. I strongly believe that her solid base in English and her ability to communicate ideas effectively and clearly in one language has helped her develop her writing skills in Spanish.

Oral Language Analysis

Elizabeth’s behaviors reflect the description of a sequential bilingual. She has been exposed to English growing up and only later in life, starting in 7^th grade, she was exposed to Spanish for the first time. She uses English to communicate with peers and family members, except with her sister with whom she occasionally communicates in Spanish. English is her first language of exposure and communication and it is also her “dominant language.” An analysis of her speaking in both languages suggests that she has good control in both but she is much more fluent in English. This is perhaps a reflection of receiving English only instruction through 7th grade and only Spanish language instruction from 7^th grade until now that she is in 11^th grade.

In Spanish class, during first semester, Elizabeth used to communicate primarily in Spanish but as soon as she had an opportunity to work with a peer, she would try to switch to English. Since second semester, Elizabeth has only been using Spanish in the classroom. I believe this change in her oral communication is due to two reasons: 1. her self-confidence has increased and she is daring to stay 100% in Spanish for the entire class period and 2. my expectation for all my Spanish IV students has changed regarding their oral communication grade.[1] So it is likely that if speaking English was not strongly discouraged and penalized through a lower grade, Elizabeth would likely prefer to communicate in English when working with her peers. Also, if I ran into her in the hallway, she prefers to communicate in her native tongue. However, she understands that Spanish is the appropriate language to use in class.

In Elizabeth’s English sample, I found no examples of code switching or other non-standard linguistic behaviors. As a native English speaker, she grew up speaking English at home and at school with her relatives and her peers. She would likely be classified as a level 7. She is able to express and defend her points of view and can justify her responses. Elizabeth’s discourse shows signs of facility with needed vocabulary. She does not struggle to find the words she needs to communicate her message and can easily use specific and technical vocabulary. She uses idioms and a variety of sentences in varying complexity with ease.

In Elizabeth’s Spanish communication, language blending was not prevalent since Elizabeth is a sequential bilingual. She learned Spanish and English separately and, also, she grew up using English in her household and at school and only using Spanish in Spanish class. Semantic expressions were much more prevalent such as saying “temas” for “teams” instead of “equipos” or “no estoy positiva” when she was thinking of “I am not positive” instead of “no estoy segura.” Elizabeth most frequent errors were related to syntax. Through copying, Elizabeth used words from Spanish with the syntax of English, her dominant language when she said “la ciudad influencia” when she was trying to say “the city’s influence” o “la influencia de la ciudad.” Most of her other syntax errors had to do with subject-verb agreement. Since verb conjugation in English is simple when compared to Spanish’ complex verb endings, Elizabeth frequently missed verb subject agreement. These are a few examples: “mi hermana iban,” “yo ve,” and “nosotros vieron películas.” I also noticed oral approximations in the pronunciation of certain words that are cognates. Elizabeth applied the pronunciation of her dominant language when attempting to pronounce the word “comercial” in Spanish.  Furthermore, I observed a few instances of code switching, when she could not think of the word in Spanish and then she switched right back to Spanish. For instance she said “ella está en el stage” o “yo estaba muy bumped que no tenía más tiempo con ella”. Therefore, primarily her code-switching was tag-switching or intra-sentential to fill in the gaps of missing vocabulary words. Her errors, especially those related to code-switching, semantic expressions and copying make me wonder how often she is thinking in Spanish and how much she is still translating from English to Spanish to be able to communicate her message fully in Spanish.  

Using the Speaking Rubric for WIDA Consortium, Elizabeth’ Spanish language development might be described as a level 3, Developing. She showed examples of simple and expanded oral sentences and her responses showed emerging complexity to add detail. Occasionally, when she attempted to use more complex sentences, she relied on her linguistic resources in English to pull her through. I believe that Elizabeth’s solid base in English and her understanding of discourse in her native tongue facilitates her ability to communicate simple and more complex ideas in Spanish. Regarding Elizabeth’s vocabulary usage in Spanish, her performance in this particular activity ranks her at a level 2. She was mostly secure in high frequency vocabulary related to everyday situations, but she was groping for vocabulary when going beyond the highly For instance, she occasionally needed to search for some infrequent words in English such that are not in her everyday vocabulary in Spanish such as “prom” and “hot tub.” I considered Elizabeth’s language control in Spanish to resemble a level 3, Developing. Her message was certainly comprehensible, though occasionally, when attempting more complex oral discourse, her communication was impeded by groping for language structures or semantic errors. I believe that most semantic errors were due to interference from her first language.

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[1] Students need to earn “pesos” by speaking Spanish in class a minimum of 30 times per quarter to receive an “A” in their oral participation grade which represents 15% of their total quarter grade. Since second semester, every time students use English in the classroom, they lose a “peso” (unless they have asked for permission first or unless after saying something in English, they correct themselves and say the same in Spanish).