Understanding young children’s everyday biliteracy: “Spontaneous” and “scientific” influences on learning

Emergent literacy in monolingual children

Early research documenting young children’s “spontaneous reading” before receiving instruction in school (Durkin, 1966) challenged the theory that children were non-literate before formal instruction (Gates, 1937). Rather, this work contributed to the growing understanding that children enter school with a great deal of knowledge about texts. As argued by Ferreiro and Teberosky (1982):

It is absurd to imagine that four- or five-year-old children growing up in an urban environment that displays print everywhere (on toys, on billboards and road signs, on their clothes, on TV) do not develop any ideas about this cultural object until they find themselves sitting before a teacher. (p. 12)

As young as one and a half years of age, children express an interest in making marks on paper and begin to demonstrate and understanding that print can represent language (Baghban, 1984; Schickedanz, 1990)—what Clay (1991) termed the sign concept. As young children use these marks to communicate with others, they form hypotheses about how this representation happens (Rowe, 2008). Young children begin with approximations of letter shapes, moving over time towards increasing conventionality, as they construct, revise and discard hypotheses about how print works (Teale and Sulzby, 1986). At the same time that children learn about the conventions of written language, children also construct hypotheses about writing’s function, studying and creating texts that approximate to genres, like lists, stories and letters (Harste et al., 1984; Rowe, 2008). Studies of monolingual children learning to write in Hebrew, Spanish and Japanese hiragana script suggest similar trajectories occur across languages and script systems (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982; Kato et al., 1999; Tolchinsky and Teberosky, 1998). There are some language-specific influences, with the nature of the language or script directing attention to particular features, like consonants in a consonantal script such as Hebrew (Tolchinsky and Teberosky, 1998). There are also universal patterns in early literacy, with children initially recognizing the relationship between print and speech, theorizing unconventional ways that this relationship is mediated by symbols, and then moving towards conventional ways of using symbols to represent sound and meaning.

Emergent biliteracy and bilingual children

Studies of emergent biliteracy, although still relatively scarce, have begun to describe how literacy develops across two writing systems. Both before children enrol in school and in the absence of formal biliteracy curricula, children still explore and express interest in biliteracy (Hudleson, 1984; Reyes and Azuara, 2008). Children’s everyday lives, including activities like going to the shop and participating in community events, can all facilitate children’s biliteracy (Reyes, 2012). One important support for emergent biliteracy is children’s interactions with parents around literacy artefacts in their home language (Kenner and Gregory, 2003). Like monolingual emergent writers, bilingual children construct and revise their own theories about how text represents meaning (Reyes, 2006). While teachers and parents may worry that children will be confused by differences in writing systems, biliterate children seem to develop a meta-awareness of graphic symbols as “signifier material” available across writing systems (Kenner et al., 2004). Studies of Arabic–English and Chinese–English bilingual children highlight how bilingual children develop both language-specific and transferrable knowledge about different writing systems (Kenner et al., 2004; Yaden and Tsai, 2012).

Bilingual children also develop a meta-linguistic awareness about how their two languages relate to each other and theorize ways that print can represent linguistic differences (Gort, 2006; Reyes, 2012; Reyes and Azuara, 2008). For example, one bilingual kindergartner described by Moll et al. (2001) used a string of letters to represent her story as told in English, and then used the same exact same string of letters, carefully copied beneath, to represent the same story told in Spanish. This decision revealed the child’s working theory that the singular meaning of the story needed to be represented consistently. This kind of bilingual hypothesis construction and revision echoes the processes of young monolingual children as they come to understand the relationship between speech and print.

Studies of biliteracy also highlight some of the ways in which literacy knowledge extends across linguistic boundaries. Looking at bilingual students transitioning from emergent to conventional biliteracy, Gort (2006) observed how children revised their hypotheses about the different sound–symbol relationships used in English and Spanish text. She used the term interliteracy to describe how children learned and applied language-specific orthographic and graphophonemic conventions first in one language, then in both, and then selectively in the appropriate language. This interliteracy seems to represent a normal part of bilingual/biliterate development, rather than error or interference.

Looking at inventive spelling in adult Spanish–English bilinguals, Kalmar (2015) noted the pedagogical value of a “hybrid alphabet” in which writers used sound–symbol relationships from Spanish to represent, remember and reproduce English words. In his words, students used one alfabeto (set of letters) to represent two different abecedarios (sets of sounds).

Hudleson (1984) noted that first-grade children who had been provided with initial literacy instruction only in Spanish were similarly able to create English texts, using inventive spelling which drew on Spanish encoding conventions (e.g. “damorosayco” for “the motorcycle”). Likewise, in a case study of four second graders in a bilingual programme, de la luz Reyes (2001) noted bilingual children’s ability to read and write in languages in which they had not received formal literacy instruction. Naming this phenomenon “spontaneous biliteracy”, she attributed it to two significant factors: the students’ social play with each other and a learning environment that nurtured the students’ cultural and linguistic resources. Like Durkin’s monolingual early readers, children demonstrated biliteracy abilities that extended beyond the areas in which students had been systematically instructed. The teacher, peers and classroom environment all contributed to this “spontaneous biliteracy”. Considering de la luz Reyes’ notion of “spontaneous biliteracy” and Vygotsky’s notion of “spontaneous” learning highlights the way that even inside the classroom, children learn through both systematic instruction and unplanned, unsystematic social interactions.

Related to this, while biliteracy is not contingent on systematic instruction in two languages, the classroom climate does seem to influence children’s biliterate trajectories. Just as de la luz Reyes (2001) described a teacher and classroom that facilitated biliteracy, others have described contexts that may inhibit it. For example, Kabuto’s (2013) longitudinal observation of her biliterate daughter, Emma, highlighted the influence of changing contexts. In kindergarten, Emma’s teacher valued and admired her biliterate abilities; Emma’s kindergarten writing was characterized by a large number of bilingual texts. In contrast, Emma’s first-grade teacher was unaware of her biliteracy and did not notice or encourage it. Over the course of the year, Emma seemed to shift in her perception of herself as monolingual rather than bilingual and began to write less in Japanese at home.

Finally, the social influences on a child’s biliterate trajectory include not only teachers and parents, but other children, like siblings and friends (Gregory, 1998; Gregory, 2001; Gregory et al., 2004). However, much remains unknown about how children come to understand and use two writing systems when only given explicit and systematic instruction in one, and particularly about how children move from emergent to conventional ways of using multiple symbol systems. Given the increasing number of children with biliterate potential, the lack of widespread institutional support in the U.S. for non-English languages, and the relationship between biliteracy and bilingual children’s academic success, this stands out as a potential valuable avenue of enquiry. In this paper, my analysis considers: How did these children understand and use conventions from different writing systems? What did children’s talk about writing and talk during writing suggest were supportive factors in their biliteracy?

Classroom context

This study took place in Ms Barry’s (all names are pseudonyms) first-grade classroom, located on the outskirts of a large metropolitan area in the Southwest. Ms Barry had taught for several years in the district, and prior to that time, on the US–Mexico border and in Central America. She self-identified as White, had a master's degree in bilingual/bicultural education, and self-assessed her Spanish proficiency as “fluent, but not native”. All of the students in Ms Barry’s classroom had been classified as “English Language Learners” based on home language surveys, had family roots in Mexico and/or Central America, and had been placed with Ms Barry for English learning support. Several students reported that their families also spoke some English at home, or were in the process of learning English. Many had older siblings also enrolled at the school.

Although there was support for bilingual education in neighbouring districts, and the school was planning on building a bilingual programme in forthcoming years, at the time of the study, the official school language policy restricted the use of Spanish. The administration allowed teachers working with bilingual children to use oral Spanish for clarification purposes. However, teachers were directed to teach reading and writing only in English, and school-wide literacy assessments were only given in English. All of the official curricular materials, including reading and language arts textbooks, were likewise provided only in English. Like many primary teachers, Ms Barry set aside class time for systematic “word study” of common English letter-sound patterns (e.g. r-controlled vowels, CVCE words) and displayed charts and other environmental print in the classroom for students to reference as they wrote.

Despite the restriction mentioned above, Ms. Barry perceived she had some “wiggle room” to exercise professional judgement about how best to teach her classroom of bilingual children, both as a respected teacher and because the district was planning to adopt a bilingual model the next year. In her classroom, Ms Barry regularly modelled the use of Spanish, English and both together in her own speech and writing, and explicitly encouraged students to do the same. She also supplemented the English textbooks with a personal collection of bilingual and Spanish-language picturebooks. During read-alouds, she created language charts (Roser et al., 1992) in which she transcribed children’s talk (in both languages) in response to books and, for some occasions, created word banks in Spanish and English. Although at the beginning of the school year students almost exclusively used English for writing and whole-class talk, by the end of the year, all students had written texts in Spanish, for particular readers and occasions (Durán, 2017).

Data collection and analysis

This study draws on qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis. I visited Ms Barry’s classroom two to three times per week over the course of a year, for approximately 45 minutes each visit during writing instruction. As a participant–observer, I sometimes assisted Ms Barry in tasks like handing out papers or talking to students about their writing. At other times, I stepped back to observe students’ interactions with each other and with her. I recorded these observations in fieldnotes (Emerson et al., 1995), audio and video recordings, and by taking pictures or making copies of student work.

I chose six focal children to follow closely, using purposeful sampling (Merriam, 2009), described below. In addition to collecting copies of focal students’ finished work, photos of their works in progress, and recordings of their writing-related talk, I conducted semi-structured interviews with them at the end of the year, using the work they had done over the year as the seed for participant retrospection (Martínez, 2010; Rampton, 2003). In these interviews, I asked children about their composing decisions for particular pieces of writing and how their intended readers had responded. I also asked children to reflect on their own literacy learning and biliterate abilities, such as which language, if any, they felt was easiest to write in. Although I focused primarily on these six students, I also compared the patterns I saw in their talk and writing with those of their classmates as a whole. Likewise, although the focal students guided my placement of cameras and audio-recorders, their interactions with other students sitting near them provided me with important information and context.

Focal students

Below, I present brief description of the six focal students. In choosing these six children, I first generated a list of potential students based on initial observations and excluding any students whose parents gave permission for observation but not video- or audio-recording. Given my interest in biliteracy, I hoped to observe students who represented a range of different language and literacy competencies. In consultation with Ms Barry, I generated an initial list and revised it so that that we both judged it to be diverse along an emergent/conventional writing continuum, as well as along a bilingual/biliterate continuum (Hornberger, 2003).

My initial list included five students; the sixth, Kelsey, arrived at the end of January from a neighbouring district which had provided her with Spanish literacy instruction. Given my interest in biliteracy, I added her to my list of focal students. Kelsey had highly developed Spanish literacy but reported little exposure to English instruction prior to joining Ms Barry’s class. Paco, the other student who most often wrote in Spanish, had changed schools several times the previous year. Ms. Barry thought that Paco might have received some Spanish literacy instruction as a result. Paco also used Spanish in whole-class settings more often than his peers. Given my deliberate inclusion of these two students, who used Spanish more often than average, my selected focal students represented a variety of different trajectories towards biliteracy, but were not representative of the class as whole.

Analysis

This study draws on two lines of analysis. First, I analyzed literacy products: the texts that students created over the course of the year. Examining students’ inventive spelling can offer insights into working theories of print and how children move over time from emergent to conventional literacy practices (Kamii et al., 2001). Drawing on the writing samples of focal students over time, I engaged in data display (Miles and Huberman, 1994) in order to identify both changes over time and repeated regularities in students’ writing across languages.

I looked at trends across all six focal children, as well as across each student’s writing over time and, in keeping with a translingual perspective, across languages. Informed by foundational work in emergent literacy, I looked at patterns in students’ inventive spelling and, in the interviews, at students’ explanations of their writing decisions (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982). I looked at bilingual texts, as well as comparing examples of monolingual texts in Spanish and English written by the same student at around the same time. I also collected writing samples from the whole class for several units of study and was able to compare to what extent patterns in focal children’s writing were typical (or not) of the class more broadly.

Second, I analyzed students’ literacy processes, considering what students said and did as they wrote, as evident in fieldnotes and video-recordings. I began by reading my fieldnotes and transcribed interviews in order to identify themes and patterns, and then returned to smaller segments of talk for close analysis. For example, in my initial round of coding, one emergent code was “metalinguistic talk”, in which students explicitly referenced Spanish and/or English. In the next round of coding, I refined this category by identifying instances of meta-linguistic talk that also involved writing: either students were talking about linguistic differences while involved in the process of writing, or they explicitly referenced differences in writing systems.

I analyzed the video segments I had flagged for these reasons using what Erickson (2004) described as ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction: the close analysis of naturally occurring talk. With the understanding that social interactions in classrooms “acquire their meaning from inside as well as from the outside of the exchanges themselves” (Duranti, 1997: 278), analysis of talk was grounded in my understandings of the classroom context, gained through participant-observation over an extended period of time. By closely analyzing what students said as they wrote, as well as what they said about writing, I was able to theorize relationships between the process of composition and students’ written products.

Flexibility with graphic symbols

When composing, students often applied their formal, instructed knowledge of sound–symbol relationships to the composing task to hand, in whatever language that happened to be. Most students used English sound–symbol relationships, which they had been systematically taught, to solve the challenge of encoding Spanish words, which they had not. Looking at students’ inventive spelling, in which they improvised possibilities for representing Spanish words, illustrates this process. Table 2 presents examples from one student’s work, which represents typical patterns in the classroom.

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Table 1.

Focal students.

Child’s name	Schooling experience	Self-reported family influences
Paco	English; some Spanish in previous years when moving between districts	No older siblings, younger brother
Jesenia	English	Older and younger siblings; older sister helped her with homework in both languages
Victor	English	Older sister
Marisol	English	Older siblings and cousins
Kelsey	Spanish until arriving at Kimball mid-year	Mother supported her in English, grandmother in Spanish
Marta	English	Older sister very involved as family interpreter; assigned and graded
		English homework for her

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Table 2.

Sample of Marta’s invented spelling.

Marta’s invented spelling (Spanish)	Standard Spanish spelling	Marta’s invented spelling (English)	Standard English spelling
Freholes	Frijoles	Wiht	With
Boneta	Bonita	Sum	Some
Wele	Huele	Ise cream	Ice cream
cero	Quiero	Firewrcs	Fireworks
Cowethe	Cohete	Tethchr	Teacher

Marta, like most of her classmates, had been explicitly and formally instructed in school on English sound–symbol relationships, but not in Spanish ones. When writing in Spanish, then, she drew on the resources available to her. She used English sound–symbol relationships in order to encode Spanish words, similar to the writing of children from English-dominant homes who are learning to write in a Spanish immersion setting (Gort, 2001). This use of English graphophonemic conventions to encode Spanish words was seen in most of Ms Barry’s students, who had likewise been instructed systematically in English sound–symbol relationships, but not in Spanish ones.

Although Spanish and English use an almost identical alphabet, the transcription of each spoken language into text uses divergent graphophonemic conventions. Students’ repurposing of English graphophonemic conventions was most visible in their use of letters with divergent phonetic realization in English and Spanish, such as e/i (as in “boneta” for “bonita”) and j/h (as in “freholes” for “frijoles”). The application of sound–symbol relationships from English to Spanish was also visible in the frequent use of letters and letter clusters like “k”, “w”, and “th” which are rarely used in Spanish (as in “cowethes” for “cohetes” and “wele” for “huele”).

In contrast, most students’ invented spelling in English rarely showed the reverse transfer of Spanish graphophonemic patterns into English text. Rather, common invented spelling patterns usually reflected overgeneralized or still-developing understandings of English patterns, as in words like “wiht” (with), “sum” (some), “tethchr” (teacher) and “ise cream” (ice cream). For example, the phoneme /k/ of Marta’s “firewercs” (fireworks) is represented in different English words with a wide variety of graphemes, including “c”, “k”, “ck”, “x”, “qu”, “que”, “ch”, “kh”, “cq” and “kk” (Freeman and Freeman, 2014). Marta’s choice of “c” to represent /k/ was similar to developmental trajectories in monolingual English-speaking children, who move over time from phonetic spelling (mapping phonemes to graphemes) to orthographic spelling, which reflects the complex influences of etymology, history and language contact (Bear et al., 2000).

However, while most students in Ms Barry’s classroom applied English graphophonemic conventions to the novel context of writing Spanish-language texts, the one student with systematic instruction in Spanish literacy conventions displayed the opposite tendency. Rather than applying English patterns to represent Spanish words, Kelsey used Spanish sound–symbol relationships to represent English words. Consequently, the patterns in her inventive spelling looked very different from her classmates. Table 3 illustrates her application of Spanish graphophonemic conventions to both English and Spanish text.

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Table 3.

Sample of Kelsey’s invented spelling.

Kelsey’s invented spelling (Spanish)	Standard Spanish orthography	Kelsey’s invented spelling (English)	Standard English orthography
Asiendo	Haciendo	Sori	Sorry
Saver	Saber	Pliz	Please
Eyos	Ellos	Bay	Buy
Qieres	Quieres	Ar	Are
Vonita	Bonita	Samwech	Sandwich

In contrast to the examples in Table 1, Table 2 shows Kelsey frequently used Spanish sound–symbol relationships to represent English words, as in sori for “sorry”, pliz for “please” and bay for “buy”. Kelsey’s spelling of Spanish words was more conventional than her classmates, with her inventive spelling displaying her emergent understanding of irregular aspects of Spanish orthography. For example, Kelsey did not always use the “h muda” or “silent h” (as in “asiendo” for “haciendo”). Likewise, although both “b”and “v” can represent /b/ in Spanish, Kelsey typically used the “v de vaca” (as in “vonita” for “bonita” and “saver” for “saber”). However, unlike Marta and the rest of her classmates, Kelsey rarely represented sounds in Spanish using English graphophonemic relationships. Formal, explicit instruction, then, provided important cues to children about sound–symbol relationships. However, children were not limited to composing only words they had learned how to spell conventionally, or composing in the language that they had been taught systematically. Rather, they were able to use their knowledge of one writing system to support their performance in another (Gort, 2006; Moll, 2014).

Students also displayed a flexible understanding of how graphic symbols work to represent different kinds of meaning. They negotiated what Kenner (2004) labelled “boundaries and crossings” (p. 51) between the two systems, looking for points of overlap as well as divergence. For example, in the following exchange, students attended to the differential use of punctuation conventions across languages and how similar symbols could flexibly represent not only sounds but also meaning and tone. In the following exchange during a writing lesson, Ms Barry used examples from students’ writing to show how exclamation marks influence a reader. One student, Andrea, had already been making extensive use of inverted exclamation points in her Spanish writing, perhaps modelled or taught by a parent or older sibling. Written on the board was one such sentence, which read “Fuimos al baile” (We went to the dance). Ms. Barry modelled reading the sentence out loud with a relatively monotone expression, and then with more emotive force, asking Andrea which version was closer to her intended meaning:

Ms. B: So Andrea, how did you want us to read that? With a period at the end or with an exclamation mark?

Andrea: Exclamation mark.

Mrs. B: Exclamation mark? Okay, this is an exciting part of hers, too. Now remember in Spanish, we talked about how we put an exclamation mark there, but we also put one in front, which Andrea, I saw in your book, you had a lot of these types of exclamation marks, right? So… this one goes the dot and then the line, this one goes the dot up here.

Derek: Like the “i”

Ms. Barry: Kind of looks like the “i”, yeah.

Kelsey: Como la “i”.

Ms. Barry Como la “i”.

Everyday biliteracy learning

In addition to repurposing what they had learned systematically about English literacy, students’ biliteracy was supported by their everyday interactions with family members and peers. Both in retrospective interviews and in informal conversations, children in Ms Barry’s class cited their parents and older siblings as important contributors to their biliteracy and especially their Spanish literacy learning. Ek et al. (2013) described this kind of home-based language teaching as linguistic motherwork, highlighting the often-gendered nature of the work. Here, I describe a similar phenomenon, but use family literacy work instead, in order to include the extensive contributions of older siblings.

Children’s interviews revealed the impact of family literacy work on Spanish literacy in particular. For example, Jesenia, who described herself as equally skilled at writing in both English and Spanish, pointed to her older sister in cultivating this biliterate dexterity:

She helped me write, when I was gonna, when I was in in Pre-K and Kinder, they gave me a little bit of homework, and I needed to write it in bilingual and I couldn’t do it. So she helped me.

In addition to reporting family literacy work, students had repeated classroom experiences of reading and rewriting Spanish-language texts that originated from their homes. For example, before beginning a unit of study on poetry, Ms. Barry sent a note home asking families if they had favourite poems or songs they could share. Students brought in a number of Spanish-language poems, rhymes, song lyrics and prayers and I observed a number of students reading or singing along to these familiar texts. For example, Marisol copied over the lyrics to the popular traditional song “De Colores” from a notebook she brought from home, singing softly to herself as she did. Some of the words she copied over (e.g. “de”) were ones she later used in her Spanish writing or had analogous spelling patterns (e.g. “me” in “me gusta”). It may be that reading this familiar text helped her discover the ways in which Spanish graphophonemic relationships differed from the English ones she had learned systematically. Scholars of emergent literacy have documented the value of songs, rhymes and predictable text in developing and refining students’ understanding of sound–symbol relationships (Cunningham and Allington, 2003).

Finally, children’s interactions with each other inside the classroom supported their biliterate development. During writing time, the classroom was filled with a (mostly) quiet buzz of students talking out loud to themselves and others. The following exchange between a group of students working together illustrates the collaborative nature of students’ writing efforts. In this exchange, students were researching different animals and collecting information about their chosen animal on a graphic organizer. Some students had books in English and others had books that were bilingual, depending on the available options in the library. Students had also written to their parents and siblings to ask what their family members already knew about the chosen animal. One student, Eric, was using his father’s extensive (Spanish only) reply as his source of information. In this case, all of the children were recording the information they found in English, although Ms Barry had invited the use of both languages. In this process, children relied on each other as they encountered various challenges:

Cristina: How do you spell dragonfly?

David: ((pointing to the title of her book, Dazzling Dragonflies))

D:r:a:gonfl:y, that’s r:, oh es ésta, dra:gonfly

Cristina: ((pointing to the whole title)) ¿Todo eso? [All of this?]

David: ((pointing to just the beginning of ‘Dragonflies’)) No, sólo eso. Nada más esto. Primero la pones the a. [No, just that part, just this part. First you put the a.]

Eric: Pero no, nomás-[No, it’s just-]

David: Nomás ésta, es ésta part. D:r:a:gonfl:ies [Just this, it’s this part.]

Ana: ((holding up bilingual book about peacocks)) ¿Me buscas la page?

[Can you find the page for me?]

Eric: ((Finds page for Ana))

(a few minutes later)

Eric: ¿Cómo se dice águila en inglés? [How do you say eagle in English?]

Immediately afterwards, Ana asked for assistance in reading her book, which was written at a level that challenged her decoding abilities. That her book was bilingual meant that a peer with stronger decoding skills in either English or in Spanish would be able to help her. In this instance, Eric paused from reading the Spanish-language text that his father had written for him in order to flip through Ana’s book and find for her the page that talked about habitats. Although it is not clear whether Eric used the Spanish text, English text or both to find the desired page, it is likely that the availability of print in both languages facilitated his search for information. He was independently and seemingly easily able to decode and understand the informational text in Spanish that his parents had written for him: an ability that he had not been formally or systematically taught. A few minutes later, Eric paused from his writing to ask for assistance translating from the Spanish text he was reading to the English text he was writing.

To support their work in learning, organizing and remembering information about animals, students relied on each other, with talk in both languages, as well as texts which were entirely English (“Dazzling Dragonflies”), texts that were entirely Spanish (Eric’s snake information sheet from home) and bilingual texts (Ana’s peacock book, which was written in parallel translation). Both schooled and everyday sources of learning were useful in this task. The bilingual nature of these interactions also highlights the value of bilingualism as a scaffold for learning in either language. As children produced (in this example) monolingual English texts, they used talk, texts and literacy knowledge in both languages to do so. Likewise, children’s interactions with each other extended the range of what each would have been able to do on their own. As Vygotsky (1986) argued, social interactions scaffold later independence. What children can do collaboratively today, they can do on their own in their future.

The above example illustrates how children’s bilingualism and social interaction supported them in writing monolingual English texts. When producing bilingual or Spanish texts, they used similar strategies, using available Spanish environmental print, asking others for help with spelling and translation, and approximating conventional spelling. However, writing in Spanish, as a whole, seemed more difficult for children, with students usually choosing to write in English unless they had a specific reason not to. This initial reluctance to write in Spanish may have been mediated by a number of factors: their instruction in English but not Spanish literacy may have made them more confident in their English writing; they may have been sensitive to a school climate that privileged English over Spanish; and/or they might have been influenced by their experiences with other teachers.

The following exchange illustrates one way children supported each other in creating Spanish texts, beyond decoding and encoding. In the following exchange, Marta worked on a book about bilingual horses, next to her seatmate, Luis, who at the time I had only observed writing in English. At this point in the year, Marta had made a number of bilingual books, most of which were written with parallel text in English and Spanish. In contrast, I had not yet observed her seatmate, Luis, using any Spanish in his writing, although he often used Spanish in his talk. As I sat down next to both of them, Marta explained to me that she was writing about horses for her family, because “It’s a long story, but my grandmother used to have a lot of horses.” As she continued talking, her seatmate Luis interjected:

Marta: I’m making a mini-book for my family… I’m doing it bilingual.

LD: Why did you do it bilingual?

Marta: I’m doing it bilingual, because my mum and my dad, they know bilingual.

Luis: I don’t know bilingual.

Marta: Yes, you do. Because when we were in kinder you know it.

(Fieldnotes, 31 March 2014)