Since Solin is a perfect case of a true simultaneous bilingual student, I feel that it is hard to choose which language is more dominant. However, since when he communicates orally he is much more dominant in English, I will be referring to English as being his L1 and Spanish his L2.
In these writing samples Solin was given three pictures to write about in Spanish and then in English again. Solin was expected to write a description of what he saw in each picture. When I took a look at Solin’s writing samples, I was able to easily identify his writing patterns and the reasoning behind what he wrote.
Since Solin is a Kindergarten student in a 90/10 model Spanish immersion program, he has not had any formal instruction in English. (Mom has tried to teach him some basic reading skills in English, but his overall literacy instruction has been in Spanish). So based on this fact, we can see that he continues to apply his literacy knowledge of writing from Spanish into his English writing sample. If we use the Rubin and Carlan’s stages of writing development, we are able to see that Solin’s L1 is semi-phonetic stage. He is able to see that there is a relationship between letters and sounds, but cannot fully match them with the letters he is writing. Solin is heavily relying on consonant sounds and includes very few vowels in his writing. As you can see he is able to identify a high frequency word like “the” but the rest is still confusing for him.
As Rubin and Carlan’s would describe Solin’s writing sample, he showed many signs of being in the phonemic stage of writing development. We see that Solin is able to write letters to represent most sounds in words in his Spanish writing sample.
As you can see in the writing samples, he is much more confident and skilled when he writes in Spanish. He has the academic knowledge and is able to execute the task fairly easily. However, when it came to writing in English, he looked anxious, since he really did not know what he was doing when he wrote. (Which is very interesting, since he was able to communicate orally much more easily his message in English than in Spanish). While he wrote his Spanish writing sample, he would write, stop and sound out the word, and then write some more. During the English writing sample, he would focus and write, and when he stopped to think, got frustrated and he would give up on the sentence. He proceeded to the next picture and wrote the next description. He did not seem as proud of his work in English as he did in his Spanish writing sample. In the English writing sample he used many spelling approximations due to his Spanish literacy development in class: “grwr” for girl, “bori” for boy.
Once we finished gathering the data for the assessments, I took some time to talk to Solin. I asked him how he thought he performed in the writing samples. Here is what was said:
Paola: ¿Y cómo te fue?
Solin: En español, bién. En inglés, no muy bién.
Paola: ¿ Y eso por qué?
Solin: Pues, porque no sabo escribir en inglés. Mi mamá me enseña leer en inglés pero no mucho.
Solin is very conscious of the fact that his L1 writing skills are not as well developed as his L2, but he is not worried about it since his mother has explained to him the process of going to an immersion school. He understands that in second grade he will start taking English class, and he will continue to develop his English literacy skills. But for the time being, he is enjoying himself as he develops his Spanish literacy skills.
