Writing Analysis

          As an important note, Jessica has grown up in a predominately Spanish speaking home, but has attended a school where Spanish has not been taught formally.  This school year, 2^nd grade, is her first year to have a 20 min. daily literacy lesson in Spanish. 

For the English portion of this writing analysis, the class was asked to write a St. Patrick’s Day story about a pot of gold.  Jessica wrote a well developed, ten sentence story that had a clear beginning, middle and ending. Jessica’s story resembles other typical fairy tales, like Hansel and Gretel.  Jessica wrote about a little boy and little girl who were walking through the forest.  In the forest, a leprechaun hid a pot of gold from the children.  The children gave up looking for the pot of gold, but then returned the next day to ask the leprechaun to help them find the pot of gold.  Finally, the leprechaun gave them the pot of gold because the children were poor. 

Jessica used a typical English discourse pattern for the organization of her story.  She introduced the characters and setting, she then moved on to the problem and then the characters solved the problem in the end.  Jessica was able to give a few details in her story, used a variety of words, varied her sentence lengths, used different beginnings within her sentences, and presented a clear problem and solution.  Jessica understands difficult vowel-consonant agreements, is able to spell sight words correctly, and uses spelling patterns, like the silent e, throughout her story.  Therefore, in Jessica’s written English development, I would put her at the transitional stage, according to Rubin and Carlan. 

In terms of any miscues, Jessica did not use any code switching within this story.  Jessica’s mistakes throughout the story were mostly due to grammar.  For example, Jessica used quotation marks to show someone speaking one time, but did not carry that throughout her entire story, although her characters spoke many other times.  Jessica said that “the lepercond hided the pot of gold so the kids do not get some of his gold.”  This sentence has both a verb-subject disagreement and also the incorrect past tense use of the word ‘hide’.  She made very few spelling errors:  lepercond (leprechaun), havint (haven’t), and por (poor).  Lastly, she did miss a few periods and capitalizations to end and begin her sentences.

In the small Spanish literacy group, the students were asked to write about either their favorite birthday and explain why it was their favorite, or to write about what a favorite birthday would look like to them.  This topic was chosen because we had just read a book about a little girl’s first piñata at her birthday party.  It is important to note that just a few months ago, Jessica and the other children in this Spanish literacy group felt very stuck if asked to write anything in Spanish.  They all would just sit and wait for a more guided writing lesson.  Nobody wanted to participate in independent writing.  It is possible that all of these children have seen very little written text or communication in Spanish before this year.  After getting to know their families, many of their parents have very little formal education and most likely do not use writing as a form of communication.  Finally, after several months of mostly guided writing instruction, I was excited to see that the students were willing to participate in this independent writing activity.  All four students took some time to consider the topic and then began to write, regardless of the fact that they did not always know how to spell or write a given word.  Jessica wrote a four sentence paragraph, after I asked her to add more details to her paragraph.  Jessica chose to write about her dream birthday, which would be fun with many gifts and money.  She would get $50 in order to buy a purple bicycle and purple and blue earrings.

Although more difficult to decide, I believe that Jessica used a more typical Spanish form of discourse in her writing.  She started with her main idea “Yo quiero on cumpleaños diverted (I want a fun birthday)” and then the rest of the paragraph was simply the details of what she wanted for her birthday.  Jessica did not use any transitional words in her writing, like she did in her English paper (next, then, etc.)  She did not add many details or use many unique words, other than colors to describe her desired objects.  She began two sentences with “Yo quiero..” (I want), another sentence began with the word “Con” (with) and the last sentence began with “Y” (and).  Her sentence structure was very simple and although she gave a few specific examples:  pastel de elado (helado), regalos, dinero, bicicleta, y arêtes; there were no other details about a party, friends or family, activities, etc.

In terms of other miscues, Jessica did not use any code-switching in her Spanish writing.  Her spelling and grammatical errors mirrored her English schooling.  For example, she wrote “on” instead of un, she wrote “diverted” instead of divertido, she did know to make “morado” morada because of feminine bicicleta, nor add –es to the word “azul” after referring to her arêtes.  Lastly, she did not know that “elado” has a silent ‘h’ in the front, nor did she know that “ninero” is spelt diñero.  Overall, I would put Jessica at the phonetic stage or possibly moving into the transitional stage of writing in Spanish, according to Rubin and Carlan.  Jessica had some errors due to the different phonetic systems of English and Spanish and she lacked more details in her writing.  Although Jessica did not make a significant number of mistakes in her Spanish writing, she seemed more concerned with making her writing perfect than on getting down her ideas.

Overall, Jessica is a much stronger and confident writer in English, which is not surprising given her level of schooling in English so far.  However, I am very happy with her progress in Spanish literacy this year and feel that given her ability to transfer ideas between the two languages, she will continue to grow in length, confidence and details in her written Spanish development for the remaining part of this school year.