| Julie Rosiek Introduction As research indicates, most children are writers before they come to school and are eager to write once they get there. Although oral/vocal expression begins very early in life, the child�s first permanent record usually takes the form of a scribble at about the age of eighteen months or so. This scribble is the beginning of expression, which leads not only to drawing and painting, but also to the written word. The way in which these first marks are received and the attention that is paid to them may cause young children to develop attitudes that will remain with them as they start formal schooling (Lowenfeld, Brittain, 1987). Writing is achieved through developmental stages for both first language learners and second language learners. The question I am asking is, �What stages do second language learners develop through in order to produce written language?� Background Information Children in their earliest attempts at writing, make squiggles and scribbles. These marks represent their first attempts to make sense of written symbols and to use them to communicate (Slavin, 1988). Scribbles tend to follow a fairly predictable order. They start with random marks on a paper and gradually develop into drawings that have recognizable content. Generally, scribbles fall into three main categories: disordered scribbles, controlled scribbles, and named scribbles. Disordered Scribbles The first marks are usually random and spread across a page. This reflects an incomplete understanding of word boundaries as well as an inability to mentally create a line for placing letters or symbols (Slavin, 1988). They vary in length and direction. It may have repetition as the child swings his/her arm back and forth. Often a child may look away while making these marks and still continue to scribble. To a great extent, the scribbles themselves are based upon the physical and psychological development of the child, not upon some representational intent (Lowenfeld, Brittain, 1987). At this stage, children have little visual control over their scribbling. They are not yet ready to do tasks that require fine motor control. At this age, the child may find a crayon more interesting to look at, feel, or even taste. All children begin with scribbling, whether they are Japanese, Chinese, Russian, or American. Scribbling is a natural part of the total development of children, reflecting their physiological and psychological growth (Burns, Roe, Ross, 1988). Controlled Scribbling About six months or so after starting to scribble, children will discover that there is a connection between their motions and the marks on the paper. This is important because now children have discovered visual control over the marks they are making, and gaining control is an important developmental accomplishment. When they discover the coordination between visual and motor activity, they are stimulated to vary their motions (Lowenfeld, Brittain, 1987). Now the lines may be repeated, and sometimes they are drawn with a great deal of energy. These lines may be drawn horizontally, vertically, or in circles. Occasionally dots or small repeated patterns are found because children are now able to take the crayon off the page. By the age of three, children can copy a circle, but not a square. The scribblings become much more elaborate, and children will discover a connection between what they have drawn and something in the environment. Naming of Scribbling An important development in a child is when he/she starts to name their scribbling, such as, �This is my cat,� even though it may not remotely resemble a cat. These early markings are intended to signify meaning. They are connecting these marks to the world around them, a change from kinesthetic thinking to imaginative thinking (Lowenfeld, Brittain, 1987). This stage usually occurs at about the age of three and a half years. The drawings themselves have not changed much from early scribbles, but they are influenced by what they have done. The experience of scribbling is mainly one of motor activity. As children mature and gain more experience, they begin to expand their skills from scribbles to mock letters and eventually to accurate representations of the alphabet. Researchers have been carefully examining the writing of children and have concluded that children definitely move through developmental stages of spelling (Schroeder, 1999). There are five stages of spelling development. Pre-communicative Spelling or Random Letter Stage In this stage, children use letters, letter-like forms, scribbles, and sometimes numbers to represent a message. They may write left to right or the reverse, top to bottom, or randomly on the page. Upper and lower case letters are frequently mixed up and many letters are written reversed, such as an �e� facing left instead of right. Often in this stage, children practice word writing by copying sight words in class, such as in a Pre-k or Kindergarten classroom. Ts2or Flso0 3msD6 This could be a story or a shopping list. Individual letters tend to represent whole words. This is their first step toward organizing symbols, even though the written marks don�t look like the words they represent. Semi-phonetic Spelling or Estimated Spelling When children in this stage attempt words they don�t know, they resort to estimated spelling. They have discovered that letters represent phonemes and can be strung together to create words and sentences. Children invent spelling by making judgments about their language sounds and by relating the sounds they hear to the letters they know (Schroeder, 1999). There may be abbreviated one-, two-, or three-letter spellings to represent an entire word. Some examples of estimated spelling from a first grade class are: lv (love) vre (very) tchr(teacher) prt(pretty) rembr (remember) difrnt(different) Phonetic Spelling As children gradually identify relationships between sounds and letter symbols they begin to move into this stage of phonetic spelling. Their ability to match letters and sound is greatly improving, and they attempt to find a letter or letters for all sounds they hear in a word. In this stage, children select letters on the basis of sound without regard for English letter sequences or other conventions. They may begin to develop particular spellings for long and short vowels, plurals, and past tenses. While their spelling may not resemble English words or standard adult conventions, many adults can decipher the spelling (Schroeder, 1999). Some example: wuz(was) wint(went) gremol(grandma) wunderful(wonderful) famulee(family) weth(with) Transitional Spelling or Use of Visual Markers Here the traits continue to grow. They use both vowels and consonants in spelling a word, and tend to use a vowel in every syllable. They begin to use visual information in addition to phonetic information. Some basic spelling patterns are encountered very often, such as the �ay in say, and �ai in main, the use of �ed and �ing, the silent �e to distinguish between short and long vowels as in hop and hope. Children may not get all of these conventions at first, but they know these visual clues are important. The students are beginning to observe that writing can be used for different purposes and are also beginning to think about their audience. Correct Spelling or Mature Spelling By age ten or twelve, most children reach a fairly mature level of spelling ability. They have internalized alphabetic principles as well as basic spelling (Schroeder, 1999). They recognize when a word doesn�t look right and can write an alternative spelling for the same word. In this stage, they are familiar with most frequently used spelling patterns. They understand how to form plural nouns or to change verb tenses. They have learned the spelling of the unusually spelled word such as neighbor and sight. Also, their knowledge of word structure grows with the spelling of affixes, contractions, compound words, and homonyms such as right and write and would and wood. Review of Research ESL Writing Development Peyton (1990) found that when given the opportunity to write often, ESL children progressed through the same standard stages of writing development as children proficient in English. They moved from drawing to writing; moved from reliance on copied sight words to sounding out words and using invented spelling, which gradually approximated conventional spelling; demonstrated knowledge of written conventions; elaborated on topics; and showed an awareness of audience. He discovered that, when given the option of journal writing, ESL students did not seem to question their own ability to start writing. They simply started finding resources they needed from the environment around them and code switching occurred rarely in the children�s writing. The children could maintain either Spanish or English when the situation called for it. Eldelsky and Jilbert�s (1985) research found that young children�s writing skills develop best when the teachers believe they are capable of expressing their thoughts and opinions on paper, where the environment is print-rich and when they have frequent opportunities to communicate meaningfully in writing. Montague (1995) documented that children experience extraordinary literacy development in environments where they not only wrote, but also were taught by a teacher who constantly challenged and attended to the writer and his/her ideas. She says that these findings are essential to ESL classroom practices. If meaningful writing is encouraged, children can make use of print knowledge and begin to interact with print through writing and eventually develop competence in English. She concluded that the writing process helps both L1 and L2 learners develop a surprising amount of cognitive, social and linguistic skills. From research, it has been concluded that children who speak no English are reading some print to increase their English knowledge. Goodman (1986) researched and found that even students from non-English speaking homes come to school with the ability to read items such as cereal boxes and advertising on billboards. With this in mind, teachers should no longer concentrate on developing mastery of basic English skills before providing opportunities to read and write in English. The usual instructional sequence found in most ESL classrooms are to listen, speak, read, and then write. Urza (1987) found that students learning English as a second language demonstrate an ability to write material that they are not able to control orally, especially when it comes from within them. Edelsky and Jilbert (1985) provide an example from a study of a 2nd grader who did not use much English print and avoided speaking English, but was able to write in English when requested to do so. Ones supon a time ther livd a good harted lien. He difrnt from deadrs. He ws good toode adr animoles and de adr animoles wer good too hem. Ande he dident like too fte and he dident like de adr animal too fte. Data from K-12 Students/Teachers Monolingual English Classroom In order to incorporate the findings of researchers about the writing development, I observed a monolingual English Kindergarten classroom. Mrs. Basey�s classroom had an enriched environment. The walls were covered with labeled pictures, word walls and children�s work. The class was divided into centers/stations: reading, writing, math, computer, art, and play. Each day the children participated in the shared journal process that incorporated speaking, listening, writing and reading. The students made their own decision as to what they would write about. Once they completed a journal entry, they read it to the teacher and at �sharing� they would read to their classmates. I chose to document the stages of writing development by using a writing folder. This allowed me to observe a child�s progress over an entire year. To look at a kindergartener�s writing development I used a first grader�s writing folder. Renee�s earliest journal entry (August, 1999) seemed to focus on how to use letters to identify drawings. She drew pictures of people and wrote their names beside them. By September, she consistently wrote strings of letters that began with �I�, and her writing seemed to use letters to represent talk, for example she wrote, � IcSNiOMOM� (I love you Mom.) In her entry the teacher noted on the page that she used a conversational voice when she did her reading. In late September, Renee� began moving into the early phonemic stage. She continued with strings of letters but would separate consonant words that had direct meaning to her, such as �prst� (pierced) in �ImlklmsI PrST� (I went and got my ears pierced.) By late October, she stopped stringing letters and began using vowel combinations within the words, �I m no hos� for I am on the horse. In late November Renee� appears to be experimenting with periods. Her teacher told me they do an exercise each morning called �Class Talk� which is equivalent to a daily oral exercise in which they discuss how a sentence should begin with a capital and end with a period. Renee is placing periods after each word. Before Christmas break Renee�s writing reflects an understanding that a sentence has only one period, yet she randomly places that period within her sentence: �I Se.a DiNso� for I see a dinosaur. By January,2000, most of her writing was in the semiphonetic stage such as this entry: �I dont lik it wen i am. sik�. In February, the entries had many sight words correctly spelled: then, that, in, and, can, is. Mrs. Basey has a section of her wall devoted to site words and high frequency words. She attributes Renee�s writing as a reflection to the importance of surrounding and immersing the children in print. Early March, Renee made a significant leap into story writing. She attempted to write her own version of The Three Little Pigs after hearing the original then the spin-off of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Her writing moved to the phonetic and transitional stage. This is her entry: Wons upon a time there was three wolfes and one bad pig. The wolfes did not lik the pig. The pig was all ways chasin them. The pig was the bruter of the to pigs that was eten by the big bad wolf. Mrs. Basey did say that she helped with punctuation so that Renee� would be able to publish her work in the writing center. Renee�s experiences through daily journal writing reveal the stages she progressed through, from developing an awareness of how words are written, to an awareness that specific letter symbols and order create the words we hear, and to relate own ideas through story writing. Bilingual Classrooms When I visited four bilingual classrooms in an elementary that is 87% Hispanic in Ft. Worth, I found that the stages of writing for Spanish are equivalent to the ones in English, only the words are Spanish. The Pre-K teacher stated the children in their school are socio-economically disadvantaged and the emphasis at this age was on oral language development by facilitating language experience activities. The first 15 minutes of each day is set aside for creative journaling. The children are free to draw or write as they choose. At shared reading the teacher often writes on post-its (what the child has dictated) and attaches to the entry. Every child goes to the writing center each day where they practice writing letters by copying the Spanish alphabet and writing a list of four words that start with the letter of the week that they are working on. English may be heard at the reading carpet when a child talks about an experience and the teacher in turn will say something in English to the group like, �Wow, you got a puppy on Saturday?� English is not used when teaching or reading at this age at this school. The kindergarten bilingual class has an emphasis on making connections with Spanish sounds to symbols. It isn�t until the first week of January that the children begin seeing words in English. Their writing center has a task where they cut and paste pictures to a folder and copy the English word that connects to the picture. Before ever doing the task, the teacher models for the children what she wants done. During this time the English vocabulary words are talked about in Spanish but given the English name such as �baby�. When they have completed the assigned task, they use the remaining time to write freely in their personal journals. I did not see any attempts or evidence of transition from Spanish writing to English writing. The first grade teacher said her class�s emphasis is developing Spanish reading/writing skills and English reading skills. The teacher hasn�t encouraged English writing due to the fact that her class�s Spanish writing skills are poor. She does however have the children writing daily. They have math journals, science journals and reflective journals. The math and science journals are written in two to three times a week. In them they draw and write about what they have learned or come to understand. The children in her class have a wide range of writing ability from pre-communicative/random letter stage to the transitional/visual marker stage. She teaches new concepts and content in Spanish. She speaks English when engaged in informal conversations by answering in English, and like the Pre-K teacher repeats the child�s information back into English. This teacher feels strongly about the sequencing that her students learn before attempting writing in English. She wants her students to master their Spanish skills before moving on to English. She disputes the notion to encourage English writing before Spanish writing is well established. Again, I saw no evidence of English writing from the writing folders of past year nor from the current class being taught. It was in the second grade writing folders that I first saw evidence of a child transitioning to English writing. Mrs. Lopez the second grade teacher is now teaching fully in English, and speaks in Spanish to individuals who are having difficulty with a concept. Mrs. Lopez stated that she encourages her students to write in English, but she always makes it an option. It is the last element that they teach when in a bilingual program at this school. She said, �It is important to go through the stages of listening to, speaking and reading in English before writing. We want them to be confident and successful when beginning to bridge over to English.� Mrs. Lopez has her students writing in journals each day. Some days she will have the students reflect on their day and write about what they enjoyed, disliked, learned, or had strong feelings about. When these days occur the children are journaling twice in one day. I looked at the writing folder of 7year old Hispanic named Paul, now 8 years old and in third grade. His first piece of writing that exhibited English was dated November 4, 1999. This is Paul�s entry, which he typed and printed from the class computer i was draing amigos animos and drorflais and ther was a man that was sailin in the juater and ther was a frog and dise ther was a fishinman and ther was a grole caching the bterflais His teacher wrote under his entry: I was drawing friends, animals, and dragonflies (Paul says they are at a pond). There was a man sailing in the water and there was a frog and then there was this fisherman and there was a girl catching butterflies. Paul uses Spanish letter combinations when unfamiliar with English letter/sound combinations. To him the sound of water starts with a �wh� and in Spanish is represented with �ju� as in �Juan�. Also, he used the Spanish word for friend, due to the fact that that�s what they call one another �amigo�. Early December, Paul wrote a letter to Santa and did a fine job. Dear Santa, How are you? I am fine. How is Mrs. Clause? How are things goin over ther this year? I juant you to bring mi a carr, juan toy that is called crish crash from Hot weels and juan Nintendo game. Love, Paul Paul is fairly accurate with his spellings. He still is using the �ju� in place of �w�s�. He hears the word one as whon. With time and added experience Paul would quickly be writing in English with little mistakes. This became evident by March when he had to write a report on a planet. The children were given the choice to write in either language when reporting. Mrs. Lopez said all attempted to write in English because there was not enough resource material in Spanish. Mrs. Lopez told me, the terms we use in English science are not easily translated into Spanish. A few lines from his report are as followed: We saw that Uranus wasent a star because it didn�t twinkle. It almoust looked like Saturn. Uranus color is green with yellow stripes. Uranus is big. One day on Uranus is 171/4 hours long. This was a rough draft and Paul made only two spelling errors. Just as Edelsky and Jilbert (1995) stress, children do not need to have control over oral English in order to read and write it. Mrs. Lopez makes journal writing and going to the writing center a priority in her daily agenda. She said she doesn�t grade their writings, but that she does look through them once a week to assess the progress they are making in both their native language and their second language. Implications/classroom applications This information was gathered from educators and researchers who feel daily journal writing is essential for children to easily progress through the developmental stages of writing. From reading the research articles and observing classroom practices, I know I can use daily journal writing as a great documentation for assessing writing development. I can easily pick up a journal and analyze a student�s progression by looking back on past work. Writing in journals gives children the opportunity to use language authentically in a literal context (Perez, Torres-Guzman, 1992). I can use interactive journals to provide a medium for the children and myself to communicate on a daily basis about student-selected topics. The findings from the research suggest, for classroom applications, that ESL learners should experience the freedom to write in the language they choose without having their entries corrected, and that they need time to play with writing to develop at their own pace. Teachers need to be aware that, with minimal adult guidance and assistance, children will use their environment and their experience with writing to make the transition from one language to the other. Mistakes are a necessary part of the second language development and critical to language growth, so a supportive environment is needed for children to take risks with the written language. Children need an environment where they can make choices about which language to use when reading or writing. Teachers need to remember second language children are not only trying to improve their own writing and language use, but they are also trying to understand what someone from another culture needs to know. Conclusion Although research from Urza (1987) and others has determined that oral language development doesn�t have to precede written language development, each of the bilingual teachers I spoke with follow the usual instructional sequence of listening, speaking, reading, and then writing. What I found that was common and proved to be beneficial to the bilingual students was the daily exercise of free journal writing. Each teacher stated that the students were free to choose what they wrote about and how they wrote. Although the pre-k, kinder, and first grade teachers didn�t encourage English writing, they never denied them the opportunity to do so. The research and classroom findings echo each other: encourage ESL learners to write as often and as much a possible. Create opportunities where children spontaneously write with a purpose for a real audience (Perez and Torres-Guzman, 1992). Whether they are learning to write in their native language or a second language, children will learn to write through practice, observation, trial-and-error, and positive feedback from peers and adults. Children are likely to make rapid progress in a second language when reading and writing are a part of normal, daily classroom activities. I realized after I had gathered my samples, I should have focused on Paul�s writing development from pre-k to second. Instead, I focused on the teaching style and attitudes of the teachers in the classroom. If I were to go back, I would focus on Paul�s writing development from the on-set of school along with questioning his teachers� attitudes toward writing. Again, if time permitted and I were to redo this study, to get a more accurate understanding of the writing development among second language users, I would take an additional two or three writing folders and document over a longer period of time. I probably should have observed second language learners that were in the seventh or eighth grade and had been in the public system since kindergarten. I would also ask bilingual teachers to help translate the writings in order to better document the stages of writing development that the students had progressed through. Bibliography Burns, P., Roe, B., & Ross, E. (1988) Teaching reading in today�s elementary schools. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company. Eldelsky, C., & Jilbert, K. (1985). Bilingual children and writing: Lessons for all of us. Volta Review, 87 (5), 57-72. Goodman, K (1986). What�s whole in whole language? Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann. Hudleson, S. (1988). Children�s writing in ESL. ERIC Digest. ED303046. Lowenfeld, V., & Brittain, W. (1987). Create and mental growth. New York, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Montague, N. (1995). The process oriented approach to teaching writing to second language learners. 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