THE EMERGENT WRITING DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN LATINO PRESCHOOLERS: DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES AND INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Abstract

This article reports on a study using Piagetian clinical methodology to examine the early writing development of 56, urban, Spanish-speaking preschoolers in a metropolitan area of the United States. In addition, the article draws upon findings by the Expert Study (Flippo, 1998 Flippo, R. F. 1998. Points of agreement: A display of professional unity in our field. The Reading Teacher, 52: 30–40. [Google Scholar]) to underscore the types of instructional environments that have proven the most efficacious for the literacy growth of young, second-language learners. Following much of the same protocols of the classic study by Ferreiro and Teberosky (1982) Ferreiro, E. and Teberosky, A. 1982. Literacy before schooling, Edited by: Castro, K. G. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Original work published 1979 [Google Scholar] in Argentina, the study attempted to replicate some of the patterns found in Latin American children's early writing with those from similar backgrounds in an urban area in the United States. For the most part, the developmental patterns found twenty years earlier were also observed in the U.S. sample of preschoolers, with the exception that the four-year-old children in the present study were performing more at the level of the five-year-olds in the South American sample.