From Middle School to El Noviciado (The Novitiate): An Adolescent English Language Learners’ Multilingual Journey in Writing

• In Event: Adolescent Language Learners Engaging in Literacy Practices: Multilingual Pathways to Writing

Abstract

This case study of an adolescent English language learner’s writing development in English and Spanish explores Zulema’s writing experiences, from her first years as an ELL newcomer in middle school to her second year as a novitiate – or trainee – in a bilingual Roman Catholic convent. The presentation addresses the following research questions:
1. How do the in-school and out-of-school genres in which Zulema writes, both in English and in Spanish, change over time?
2. What multilingual resources does Zulema use to create her writing, and how do these change over time?
3. How do Zulema’s attitudes about her writing in English and Spanish change over time?

First and second language writing development are embedded within multilingual literacy-related social practices (Street, 1985; 2003). Engaging in literacy practices, then, involves much more than mastery of a set of discrete skills because reading and writing differ – and are valued differently – according to the setting and situation. Further, English language acquisition cannot be understood without attention to students’ multilingualism: in this sense, Zulema is an L1/L2 user (Cook; 2002;Valdés, 2005) whose use of two languages varies over time but whose English language writing development remains closely connected to her Spanish language use and development.

Data sources used for this case study include writing samples of academic and out-of-school writing (ages 12 and 14-20); semi-structured interviews with Zulema twice to three times per year (ages 15-20); and ethnographic fieldnotes and audio-recordings taken during observations of Zulema at school and in extra-curricular environments (ages 14-18).

Using a single case study design (Stake, 2005) in the interpretive tradition (Duff, 2007; Faltis, 1997), this analysis employs two primary methods of qualitative analysis. First, Zulema’s writing samples are analyzed using a modified genre analysis approach (Schleppegrell, 2004). Second, an interpretive analytic approach is used for field notes and interview transcripts, utilizing an iterative process of inductive and deductive coding (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Marshall & Rossman, 2010).

Data analysis suggests that significant differences existed among the academic and informal genres Zulema wrote in middle school, in high school, and as a novitiate (RQ 1). Further, her reliance on Spanish-language conversations with peers and English-language conversations with teachers as a writing scaffold at the high school level were replaced by a greater reliance on assigned written texts (in English and Spanish) at the convent (RQ 2). Finally, Zulema consistently expressed frustrations with academic writing in English and Spanish but felt passionately about the frequent personal writing she completed in both languages, although she engaged in the latter less frequently after high school (RQ 3).

The significance of this case study is that it highlights the notion that adolescent ELLs’ writing development occurs in response to the literacy practices relevant to various settings in which they engage over time, rather than at any particular point in the school curriculum. Moreover, researchers, schools, and teachers can better design curricula and assessments when second language writing development is seen from a multilingual social perspective.

Author

• Amanda Kibler, University of Virginia