Categories of Cross-linguistic Orthographic Approximations

Transitional Bilingual Fourth Graders' First Journal Entries in English

Jill Kerper Mora

San Diego State University

Excerpts by the author from:

Mora, J.K. (2001). Learning to spell in two languages: Orthographic transfer in a transitional Spanish/English bilingual program. In P. Dreyer (Ed.), Raising Scores, Raising Questions: Claremont Reading Conference 65th Yearbook, 64-84. Claremont, CA: Claremont Graduate University.
 

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this article (Mora, 2001) is to describe three bilingual fourth graders' process in learning to spell in two languages in a transitional bilingual program. This process is evidenced in daily journal entries of these native Spanish speakers who have an age and grade level appropriate competence in Spanish writing and who are making their first attempts at write formally in English. Information about children's metalinguistic awareness and how they apply linguistic rules and regularities can be gleaned from an analysis of their orthographic miscues. This type of analysis is helpful to teachers in mainstream, English as a second language and bilingual classrooms where children face the challenge of making sense of two linguistic cueing systems simultaneously or sequentially. Knowledge of the possible sources of approximated spellings can lead to an understanding of the hypotheses children formulate about English spelling based on their knowledge of their native language and prior literacy experiences, which in turn can suggest certain group and individualized instructional strategies to enhance their biliteracy learning.
 

This article is a case study of the spelling miscues or approximations of three fourth grade bilingual education students. These students were in a classroom that implemented a late-exit transitional model of bilingual instruction. At the time of this study, they were making a transition from predominantly Spanish literacy instruction with simultaneous English language development instruction focused primarily on listening and speaking skills into formal English language arts. These three bilingual writers’ spelling approximations in English demonstrate how they approached the task of transferring their orthographic knowledge from Spanish into English. This case study captured a special moment in the development of these three native Spanish speakers’ biliteracy development when they began their first journal entries in English. Consequently, this initial English writing was "unadulterated" by direct instruction in English spelling, although the students had done a considerable amount of reading in English and were surrounded by English print. I examined students' Spanish spelling errors to determine their level of development in their knowledge of the Spanish orthographic system.
 

Whether children learn through instruction in their native languages in a bilingual program, or are building on their knowledge of the writing system of their first languages as they learn English, bilingual students face academic challenges that native English-speakers may not. It is beneficial for children to be able to build on familiar language patterns and concepts in learning to spell, especially when aided by appropriate instruction that focuses their efforts on overcoming potential stumbling blocks in learning to write and spell in English.

 

Collection of Writing Samples

 

The three students involved in this case study were selected from a fourth grade bilingual education classroom in a school in the Calexico Unified School District, a district located in a rural community on the U.S.-Mexico border in southeastern California. The teacher, Ms. Ortega (pseudonym), is a certified bilingual teacher who is fully bilingual and biliterate. The classroom teacher was involved in a study of her classroom practices that foster biliteracy development (Jones, 1998). Permission was granted to photocopy entries from three students' classroom literacy journals, in which they wrote about their own experiences or responded to reading and literacy activities in the classroom based on teacher-generated prompts. Seven entries for each of the three students span a time period of three months (October 1995 to January 1996) at the point at which they were doing their first formal writing in English, although students had many prior exposures to English print. All three students were native Spanish speakers who were performing on grade level in Spanish reading. They all scored at a level three on a five-point scale on the Language Assessment Scales (De Avila, 1997) in English. According to De Avila, it is at this point in L2 learners’ language and literacy development where assessed literacy skills begin to converge with students’ scores in oral language.

 Analysis of Spelling Miscues

The first step in analysis of the data was to extract the spelling miscues from the students' writing and to categorize these according to patterns within the words. This categorization process suggested five possible explanations of the students' invented English spellings (González, 1999; Treiman, 1993). The categories and examples from students' journal entries are depicted in Table 1. A second step was to derive and categorize the students' spelling errors in Spanish to determine their possible stage of development in their native language. Examples of the three subjects' Spanish misspellings are shown in Table 2. Subsequently, each student's spelling was then analyzed and compared to the model of difficulties in phonological awareness proposed by González (1999) to discern each student's spelling errors based on the intended meaning of their journal entries.

 

 Based on the patterns of inventing spelling from the writing samples of the three fourth grade bilingual students, the following five categories emerged:

 

Category 1: Spanish spellings applied to English words

Category 2: Use of Spanish spelling approximations for English phonemes that do not exist in Spanish

Category 3: Collapse of English vowels into Spanish vowels, diphthongs or consonant blends

Category 4: Unfamiliar English spelling patterns

Category 5: Confusion of word boundaries

 

These categories of spelling miscues are evidence of a problem-solving approach to English spelling. The dilemma faced by these Spanish literate children is how to spell sounds that exist in English that do not exist in Spanish using a single set of familiar graphic symbols and sound-symbol relationships. In category 1, students merely applied Spanish letters in a near one to one match with English phonemes. However, category 2 errors represent inventive ways to transcribe phonemes that do not have an English counterpart. The examples in category 3 may represent a lack of auditory discrimination of English phonemes that are consequently omitted or collapsed into a familiar single vowel or diphthong in attempts to spell the word. Such is the case with  /th/ and /st/ in the final position or the spelling of 'likes' as 'laks' because the long i sound does not exist in Spanish. Category 4 is comprised of examples of invented spellings that could also be found among monolingual English speakers in the within-word pattern stage of spelling development (Bear, et al, 2000) based on a lack of knowledge of spelling patterns for different phonemes or irregular spellings. An example is the spelling of 'once' as 'wons.'  Category 5 represents words or phrases that indicate a lack of full awareness of word boundaries and junctures. The three bilingual students’ spelling miscues in Spanish found in Table 2 follow a consistent pattern that demonstrate confusion or omission of letras difíciles (Rojas, 1997; Thonis, 1983).

 

         Category 1: Spanish spellings applied to English words

       Category 2: Use of Spanish spelling approximations for English phonemes that do not exist in Spanish

        Category 3: Collapse of English vowels into Spanish vowels, diphthong or consonant blends

       Category 4: Unfamiliar English spelling patterns

        Category 5: Confusion of word boundaries

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