Amanda Moore
ESOL 4240-section 01
4/9/09
Rubin, R., & Carlan, V. G. (2005).
Using writing to understand bilingual children's
development. The Reading Teacher, 58(8), 728.
This article by Renee Rubin discusses how teachers can use information from students’ writing
samples in both Spanish and English to assess those students and plan instruction. In her research,
Rubin studied and compared the writing samples of bilingual students to monolingual Spanish speaking
students and monolingual English speaking students at the different stages of writing. She found that
bilingual students’ writing development is the same as that of monolingual English speaking and
monolingual Spanish speaking students. However, they did find some differences. For example, in the
precommunicative stage, the bilingual children represented both the Spanish writing and English writing
with the same string of letters. They believed the two written representations of the languages were the
same. They also found that in the phonetic stage of writing, bilingual students had difficulties with more
vowel sounds due to the different phonetic systems of the two languages. The writing samples showed
that the children wanted to express themselves even if they didn’t know the words in English or Spanish.
The priority of the students was the need to communicate.
This article was very interesting to me. One thing that I found fascinating was that the bilingual
children in the precommunicative stage wrote their words using the same string of letters for both
Spanish and English representations. This is fascinating to me because I did not realize that young
bilingual children view the letters of both languages as being the same. They know that the oral words
are different, but in their writing, they represent them the same way. Most surprising to me while
reading this article was the child who was writing in the semiphonetic stage. In the semiphonetic stage,
bilingual children will write the word the same for English and Spanish, but pronounce the words in their
respective languages. For example, the child in the article wrote the word car as “cro” for both English
and Spanish. When asked to pronounce the word in Spanish, the child responded “carro” and said the
word “car” for the English pronunciation. Before reading this article, I did not realize that bilingual
children wrote words representing both languages as the same.
This article can help me in the future when working with ELL students because it gives insight on
why a child may be struggling to learn to write the correct phonological sounds in words. After reading
this article, I now understand that it is important to emphasize meaning in writing instruction when
working with both monolingual and bilingual students. I will also be able to understand that a child may
be in one stage of writing in their first language and a different stage of writing in the second language.
This will help me understand why the child may be having difficulty in their writing.
Something else I would like to know about this subject are some strategies that would help
bilingual children better understand the language system they are trying to learn. I think that by
knowing strategies to properly teach the children the new language, the teacher can better help the
students learn the intended language. I would also like to know what types of differences would be
found in someone who speaks French or German as their first language.
This article reflects my understanding of Standard III in that I am able to understand that
children learning a second language may implement aspects of their first language when writing in their
second language. From this article, I have learned that some children may use codeswitching when
learning their second language. Some children may write the word the same way for both English and
Spanish, but they know how to pronounce the word correctly for both languages. Also, children who are
bilingual generally go through the same writing stages of writing development as monolingual children.
This is important to know when working the students, because as a teacher and knowing each of the
stages of writing, I can help guide the student in their writing and find ways to help them master each
stage of their second language development.