Diario Duo: A Promising Biliterate Pedagogical Practice to Examine Biliterate Writing

• In Event: Biliteracy Development and Multimodalities for Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

This study examined the biliterate writing abilities of 25 children over the course of their first-grade year through a biliterate writing strategy titled, Diario Duo (Duo Journal). Each student created 16 writing compositions over the course of one school year, 8 in each language (Spanish and English). All 384 writing samples were analyzed for various aspects of writing development: number of ideas, punctuation use, sentence complexity, organization and cohesion, grammar, spelling, as well as cross-language transfer using an embedded mixed methods approach that combined qualitative methods and trend analysis. Preliminary findings indicate that through a biliterate pedagogical writing practice, children followed patterns of biliterate progression over time in both languages in selected writing aspects that were analyzed.

Authors

• Adriana Alvarez, University of Colorado - Denver

• Sandra A. Butvilofsky, University of Texas at El Paso