Efraín's Writing Analysis

I consider English to be Efraín's L1 when discussing written language development because he has only attended an English-medium school. His English writing sample best matches the description of the phonetic stage of writing development as described by Gentry. The phonetic stage is where children represent most of the sounds with letters. He wrote using both consonants and vowels to describe the sounds that he hears owing to his exposure to the English language and his English-only medium of instruction. For a how-to book on the topic of swimming, the table of contents had four sections: 1) what you nede; 2) plas (places) to swim; 3) games to play; and 4) bech (beach) safty (safety).

For his L2 (Spanish) I would classify his writing development as in the semiphonetic stage. This stage is described as when children understand that letters represent sound but do represent all sounds in words. I asked him to write a short paragraph about himself. A few examples of the words he wrote were tgo (tengo), clr (color), ol (azul).

Efraín was able to hear and record many more sounds in English than in Spanish most likely due is receiving instruction in English with little exposure to Spanish at school.

Without a doubt Efraín understands that writing conveys ideas and words have meaning. His English language structures are far more complex than those he wrote in Spanish. In English he is able to expand on ideas when prompted. Although he still struggles with a few particular sounds in English, Efraín has made tremendous strides this year.

I did not see any evidence of code-switching in Efraín’s writing when compared to his speaking. The writing sample I analyzed was written over a period of many days with several opportunities to revise and edit. He had a lot of time to think about his writing whereas when he speaks it is much more spontaneous with less time to think about what he is saying. He exhibited some spelling approximations to reflect cross-language transfer by recording sounds using limited knowledge of the language code: “pepl” (people), “bech” (beach), “voleball” (volleyball), “bords” (boards), and“lif” (life). As I wrote earlier I believe Efrain’s dominant or L1 language to be English. He used English code to spell Spanish words (but not vice versa) in the case of “me” for “mi,” “is” for “es,” and “pader” (padre) for “father.

Efraín struggled to write in Spanish. In fact, he seemed confused. It took him nearly 30 minutes to write five short sentences and many of the letters he wrote did not correspond to the sounds he made when discussing his writing. I would guess that he may have written very little--if anything—in Spanish previously. I think this is most likely due to his use of Spanish as primarily an oral language used with his family at home while English is the language of schooling and social relationships.