METALINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT

 IN SPANISH/ENGLISH BILITERACY GRADES K-3

Jill Kerper Mora

San Diego State University

All Grade Levels

 

Language is rule governed. For example, nouns have number and gender and the articles and adjectives that are used to modify them must agree according to certain fixed rules. This concept is reinforced throughout the grades.

 

The Alphabetic Principle: Written text is a representation of language. In alphabetic languages, letters represent sounds in the language. These sounds (phonemes) are sometimes represented by a single letter, sometimes by more than one letter, and sometimes by clusters of letters. We can break words up into isolated sounds in order to “map” these sounds into print and/or decode text into language.

 

Kindergarten

 

Phonology: Language is a flow of sounds that represent meaning. The flow of sounds can be broken up into units called words. A word represents a concept or idea. Words can be segmented into the sounds that make it up and then reconstructed by blending those sounds together again into words.

 

Orthography/Concepts of Print: When words are written, they are separated from each other by blank spaces to make them easier to distinguish from one another. Sentences also have signals that set them apart in written text (capital letters at the beginning and ending punctuation.)

 

Morphology: Words have parts called syllables. We can listen carefully to words and count the number of syllables because they can be separated somewhat naturally as we sound out the word. This helps us to hear the different sounds in the word. We can add parts (phonemes or syllables) to words to change their meaning, such as adding –s or –es to words (nouns) to signal more than one.

 

Grammar & Syntax: A flow or stream of words can express a complete thought. This is called a sentence. We can count the number of words in a sentence. There will be a one-to-one correspondence between the number of words in a spoken sentence and the number of written words in the sentence in a text.

 

Learning Activities: Phonemic awareness activities with rhymes, chants, and songs; finger-following of text with big books, oral language development activities

 

Grade 1

 

Phonology: The core sound unit applied in Spanish reading for sounding out words is the syllable. Syllables contain at least one and frequently two vowel sounds (diphthongs). There are stressed and unstressed syllables.

 

 

Orthography/Concepts of Print: If the reader pays attention to a few basic rules and to written accent marks, s/he can pronounce every written Spanish word correctly with the proper stress placed on each syllable. A few Spanish phonemes have more than one letter-sound association and a few letters represent more than one phoneme. In these cases, we must pay attention to groups of letters to determine how to decode.

 

Morphology: Words have parts (syllables) that function specifically to signal meaning. If we change word endings, we signal meanings such as how many (nouns). We can create “word families” to signal different forms and functions around a concept (zapato, zapatero, zapatería, etc.). Changes in word endings can also indicate size, age, intensity or feelings toward the person, place or thing named by the noun (zapatito).

 

Syntax: Sentences can be analyzed to discover their component parts, which have labels and categories according to their functions. Changes in word order signal changes in meaning. We can change a sentences meaning by switching words around and/or adding words to complete the meaning, such as in declaratives to questions, affirmative to negative, etc. Certain sentence patterns are used for conveying meaning to compare/contrast people, places and things.

 

Grammar: Verb forms and tense and conjugation. Subjects and verbs must agree according to a set of rules for forming the verb (morphology). We have this agreement in order to tell who acted and when (tense). We can use forms (pronouns) to avoid repeating the subject of a sentence every time we tell about an action. Sometimes the subject of the verb will be signaled by the verbs’ ending. There are different endings and changes in verbs to indicate the time when the action took place.

 

Learning activities: Sentence manipulation; chain writing; word study.

 

Grade 2 (Building on Gr. 1 knowledge and awareness)

 

Phonology: Words can be categorized according to which syllable is stressed in speech.

 

Orthography/Concepts of Print: Teach rules for accentuation and placement of written accents. Some words carry written accents to indicate their function and meaning rather than their pronunciation (acento desinencial). Teach use of silent H

 

Morphology: Concept of root words, prefixes, suffixes. Elaborate on “word families” and the different forms of morphological changes that alter word meanings based on a root word (el zapateo, un zapatazo, zapateando). Introduce word study of the meaning of different prefixes and suffixes in Latin and Greek origin words. Introduce concept and identify Spanish/English cognates. Teach adjective and adverbial functions of morphological changes with complex sentences (single concept approach). Teach compound words and their meaning.

 

 

Syntax: Sentences can be simple or complex. We can add elements to simple sentences to expand their meaning, including adjectives, adverbs and clauses. We can collapse or expand sentences to alter meaning and for reasons of style and to add interest in writing. Certain sentence structures and word orders create a unit of meaning (idioms) or perform certain functions (comparison and superlatives). Sometimes word order is “unusual” (verb gustar) and different from the English used to convey the same ideas or concept.

 

Grammar: Pronouns have different forms and functions (subject, direct/indirect object, object of a preposition). They also appear in different positions within sentences (negation, commands) and can be attached to verb forms (enclisis).

Verbs: Verbs have parts (root and endings). There are different categories of verbs according to their endings (ar, er, ir). Sometimes more than one form of a verb tense is used to convey a verb’s meaning   (simple future vs. ir a …) that may convey different types of action (preterit vs. imperfect). There are simple and compound verbs that have parts that change and parts that stay the same to agree with the subject.

 

Learning activities: Sentence manipulation, sentence transformation, elaborate chain writing to create narratives, word study, modified cloze procedures (noun, verb omissions), simple sentence generation & short text writing tasks

 

Grade 3

 

Morphology: Categorize and define most common Latin & Greek word origins, prefixes & suffixes. Learn spelling rule changes for Spanish/English cognates. Study changes in word functions by changing forms (adjective to adverbs with mente, use of infinitives and gerunds as nouns).

 

Syntax: Elaborate on components of complex sentences, clauses. Categorize clauses by functions within sentences. Use sentence recombination to create more complex sentences using clauses and conjunctions. Teach use of passive se. Teach uses & syntax of gustar and similar verbs.

 

Grammar: Categorize pronouns according to form and functions. Introduce conditional tense and if clauses. Introduce concept of verb mood and forms of present subjunctive. Identify subjunctive used in text. Study verb tense and usage contrasts (ser vs. estar, preterit vs. imperfect, simple vs. compound tenses and forms with estar & haber)

 

Learning Activities: Word study, sentence transformation, sentence recombination to create short narratives, writing formats and structures (reports, letters, persuasion, etc.), complex sentence generation and text production