Writing Analysis

Alondra Reyes Ponce has a love for reading and writing both, not something most middle school students will admit to.  She prefers to read and write in Spanish because she feels that she can understand and express herself better in her first language.  Yet, Alondra’s writing in English seems to be more advanced than it is in Spanish.  This could be due to her having only sporadic bilingual instruction in reading and writing grades 3-5.  In 6^th grade Alondra transitioned into a support model here at Badger Ridge Middle School and continues to study hard under this model as a 7^th grader.  Alondra has had no formal reading or writing instruction in Spanish beyond the three years in elementary school.  When I asked her where she feels she learned most of her writing skills in Spanish she told me that it was during those years in elementary school, but that much more work was done in English than in Spanish during that time.  This would certainly account for her having stronger writing skills in her second language than in her first.        

The writing sample that Alondra shared with me in English is a story that she is writing on her own at home.  Her story is about growing up in Mexico.  She is very proud of how much she can remember before moving to the United States at the age of seven.  She tells a chronological story of how she grew and what she would do each day with her mother.  The discourse pattern clearly follows that of English writing as she takes the reader step by step, day by day, year by year on her journey.  She takes the reader from one event to the next using transition words like “One day,…After her mother left… After years (years later)” . Alondra’s writing does include a few run on sentences that might mirror Spanish discourse patterns such as “Her mom’s name was Valeria and her mom worked selling shoe’s laces and blenders pieces her mother would wake up really early to go to work,” but the number of simple sentences far outweighs the run-ons:  “She loved to eat them.  Her mom was busy talking to customers.  Alondra decided to poke a hole in the cup, etc.  In this case it seems more a simple misuse of punctuation than a Spanish based discourse pattern.   

Alondra’s developmental stage of writing in English is at the conventional stage.  Though Alondra makes a few mistakes in grammar / syntax (keep vs. kept, “Alondra keep growing”, and selled vs. sold “Lupita’s grandmother selled ice pops), she has a strong control of spelling patterns and sentence structure.  Alondra’s vocabulary usage is fairly simplistic, but her sentence structure and ideas are complex. Alondra wrote: “One day she got her tamal and a cup of atole but she could not open the cup.  Her mom was busy selling and talking to customers.  So Alondra decided to poke a hole in the cup.  After her mother and her mother’s friends came to see Alondra.  She was covered in Atole.”

Throughout four pages of hand-written text, there is no evidence of code-switching.  There are a few examples of language transfer such as “After years” vs. years later and “after” vs. later, but overall I believe Alondra’s writing gets stronger and stronger as she continues to write in and out of school.   Alondra’s ACCESS score in writing for 2009-2010 was a 3.6.  I am curious to see what her results will be for this year given that this is her lowest categorical score for the ACCESS test.  According to the WIDA can-do descriptors I would place Alondra at a level 4 expanding.  She is able to use details and examples to support her ideas and uses transitions words appropriately to lead the reader through her story. According to those same can-do descriptors however Alondra’s Spanish writing would be more appropriately placed at a level 3 developing.  She is able to state a main idea with some details, but lacks transitions and struggles with grammar/syntax.   

Alondra’s writing sample in Spanish is an affidavit that she is writing about herself.  The affidavit seems to start out with a traditional English discourse pattern, but then transitions into a discourse pattern with a much more additive relationship.  Alondra makes four simple statements about herself to start the affidavit, but continues by telling her story… “llegamos a los estados unidos en el 2006 y nuestras vidas cambiaron por completamente porque avia nieve por toda la ciudad y no sabiamos hablarar ingles.  Yo tenia miedo de ir ala escuela por que no sabia y conosia a nadie pero con el tiempo conosi a personas que podia confiar para hablar.  

Alondra’s writing in Spanish seems to mirror most closely the transitional stage of writing.  Though she uses no accent marks in her writing and has trouble confusing the “letras monstruas” such as in the words “educasion, halli (allí), asia(hacía) and llo(yo), I see that her writing moves beyond the phonetic stage in her sentence length and the complexity of her writing.  The sample shows no evidence of language transfer and only one example of code switching.  She states: “mi escuela es bilingual.”

For having such limited access to formal instruction in her native language over the last 11 years, it seems to me that Alondra is well on her way to becoming a great writer in both languages.  She just needs the opportunity to learn, explore and hone her writing skills in both languages.