A Look at Early Childhood Writing in English and Spanish in a Bilingual School in Ecuador

Abstract

The present study examines 20 writing samples in English and Spanish selected from portfolios of first grade children at a bilingual school in Ecuador. Based on earlier findings that paragraphs composed in English and Spanish by children, adolescents and adults are different (Lux & Grabe, 1991; Monta ~ n no-Harmon, 1991; Reid, 1990; Reppen & Grabe, 1993; Simpson, 2000), an analysis was conducted of 20 written samples from first grade children, focusing on the physical structure and the topical structure of those writings. The physical characteristics of the paragraphs included the number of T-units, words, errors, error types, sentence types and connectors. Results of this quantitative analysis do not reflect findings from earlier studies describing English–Spanish differences, which may be due to the very young age of these writers or the influence of English instruction. The topical structure analysis, an analysis of coherence derived by examining the internal topical structure of each paragraph as reflected by the repetition of key words and phrases, provides insights into the organisational patterns used by these children. The results of the topical structure analysis show that these children use similar amounts of topical repetition in the two languages. Additionally, this analysis reveals developmental stages in narrative strategies.