Exploring connections between emergent biliteracy and bilingualism

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which young emergent bilingual children begin to develop literacy in two languages, Spanish and English.Three case studies of four-year-old Mexican-background children and their families living in southern Arizona are presented from a qualitative socio-psycholinguistic perspective. The children’s home and classroom interactions were observed and analyzed for patterns of language and literacy in their two languages. The findings show that these emergent bilinguals learn and develop their own ‘theories’ and ‘concepts’ about language and literacy from an early age. The conversational participants and interlocutors were among the factors that directly influenced children’s development of language and literacy in Spanish and English. In addition, context was another important factor that contributed positively to the development of their emergent bilingualism and biliteracy. Finally, I discuss the language-literacy strategies that these Mexican-background children use as they try to make sense of their metalinguistic and biliteracy knowledge, while developing additional literacy tools and resources in both Spanish and English.

Preschool Latino Immigrant Children: Using the Home Language as a Resource for Literacy Learning

“…Preschool Latino Immigrant Children practices of Latino immigrant children in both the classroom and home contexts (see Reyes, 2006, for more details about the larger project). The preschool, in Southern Arizona, served a lowincome community of predominantly Mexican heritage students.…”

A Teacher's Inquiry into Bringing in Biliteracy in a Fifth-Grade English-Only Classroom

“…This gave us access to my students' linguistic repertoires and biliteracy became a more natural occurrence in the classroom because students can share their personal experiences that included linguistically diverse events (Manyak, 2002). This project further illustrated Reyes (2006) statement, "when children have access to writing systems and to various literacy activities in both their languages, they are more likely to become biliterate rather than literate only in the dominant language" (p. 289). I hope that teachers will read what I did here and begin to include the many funds of linguistic knowledge that their students have in their classroom pedagogy.…”

“…I attempted to "unmark" Spanish in my classroom by adding more Spanish books and dual language books to our classroom library, and sharing comics and photographs with captions in Spanish for morning work. Reyes (2006) claimed that for biliteracy to happen students must have peer and adult support at school and at home. So, I encouraged students to engage with these "new" texts in multiple ways by reading with a partner and taking dual language books home to read with their families.…”

Guiding Biliteracy Development: Appropriating Cross-Linguistic and Conceptual Knowledge to Sustain Second-Language Reading Comprehension

“…Bilingual education teachers, therefore, mediate language and literacy learning opportunities when they "apprentice" learning and enable bilinguals to try out ideas and actions through collaborative social practices (Vygotsky, 1978). In terms of successful biliteracy development, G. Li (2006) and Reyes (2006) found that the home environment was especially influential. Biliteracy facilitates the interpretation of texts when the native language, the second language, and bi/multicultural knowledge are engaged during reading.…”