Demystifying simultaneous triliteracy development: One child’s emergent writing practices across three scripts focusing on letter recognition,directionality and name writing

Abstract

It has long been acknowledged that immigrant children who are originally exposed to home languages become rapidly socialized into using only English. Although many children ultimately develop receptive skills in their home language, they often become English dominant and rarely have the opportunity for literacy development. There is also a common misperception that allowing children to acquire three languages and scripts simultaneously is either too difficult or too confusing, or both. That children do not realize their full multilingual, multiliterate potential is not only a loss to their cognitive, emotional and academic development but also a violation of their language rights. As a way to help demystify simultaneous triliteracy development, I study my own child as a motherscholar. He is growing up in the United States as a simultaneous trilingual and triliterate in three alphabetical languages using two non-Roman scripts, Korean and Farsi, as well as a Roman script, English. I examine the ways in which he makes sense of and communicates in his literate world from age three to six by focusing on his emergent writing practices, particularly letter recognition, directionality and name writing in three distinctively different scripts. Social semiotic and translanguaging theories have guided my analysis of video and audio data as well as artefacts pertinent to his writing. Qualitative analysis rooted in an ethnographic case study approach demonstrated that he recognized different orthographic symbols across scripts but made linkages between them, applied correct directionality in scripts but with flexibility, and stamped a trilingual identity and met audiences' needs through name writing. The findings show the trilingual child engaging in a more flexible and creative process of letter designing as well as name writing in three scripts in more sophisticated and nuanced ways. The study provides insights into educational practices for multilingual children at preschools and schools.

Keywords

Emergent writing home language multilingualism name writing trilingual practices Korean Farsi directionality motherscholar young children

Introduction

This is a study of my own son, Kian,¹ who is growing up in the United States (US) as a simultaneous trilingual and triliterate in three alphabetical languages using two non-Roman scripts, Korean and Farsi, as well as a Roman script, English. I examine the ways in which he makes sense of and communicates in his literate world from age three to six by focusing on his emergent writing practices, particularly letter recognition, directionality and name writing in three distinctively different scripts. Social semiotic (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996) and translanguaging theories (García and Wei, 2015) have guided my analysis of video and audio data as well as artefacts pertinent to his writing. Social semiotic theory allows me to view multilingual children crossing different scripts as fostering ‘transformative, creative actions’ (Kress, 1997: 29), and translanguaging theory similarly underscores the creativity and learning benefits of permitting children to build on their linguistic repertoires across languages. Both theories emphasize cognitive and affective benefits for multilingual children moving between scripts and languages on a daily basis.

By contrast, children growing up in the US, where a monolingual ideology largely dictates educational policy and household practice, are not always given the opportunity and encouragement to experiment across languages. It has long been acknowledged that immigrant children who are originally exposed to home languages become rapidly socialized into using only English (Wong Fillmore, 1991). Although many children ultimately develop receptive skills in their home language, they often become English dominant and rarely have the opportunity for multiliteracy development. That children do not realize their full multilingual, multiliterate potential is not only a loss to their cognitive, emotional and academic development (Bialystok, 2011), and to society, but also a violation of their language rights (García and Wei, 2015). While it is encouraging that biliteracy has recently received growing attention through the Seal of Biliteracy and in dual language immersion instructional contexts (Christian, 1996), we are nevertheless in urgent need of more studies that document literacy the practices of multilingual children—especially those using more than two languages.

In this article, I examine the case of my own son’s emergent writing practices across three scripts as a way to help demystify simultaneous triliteracy development. Reporting on rich experiences in the home context longitudinally is a small attempt to speak against the common misperception that allowing children to acquire three languages and scripts simultaneously is either too difficult or too confusing, or both. I hope to contribute to the growing collection of scholarly work addressing multiliteracy development in young children, particularly those working across three or more language systems.

Emergent writing practices of young mono- and bi-lingual children

In reviewing the extant literature on early childhood, multilingualism and multiliteracy, I have yet to find any studies on simultaneous trilingual children’s emergent writing practices. This is the gap I intend to fill. However, first, I turn to the most relevant studies on monolingual and bilingual children’s emergent writing practices.

A large body of research documents how preschool-aged, monolingual children who only speak English develop an understanding of what print looks like and how it functions without explicit instruction through exposure to and interaction with literacy in their social environment (e.g. Clay (1975) and; Harste and Carey (1979)). Emergent print awareness includes recognizing that signs and symbols represent meaning as well as making hypotheses about text directionality and how letters are formed. Young children may start writing in the form of marks that communicate meaning, copying letters, mock letters and name writing before progressing to word and sentence writing (Martens, 1999; Yang and Noel, 2006). These early literacy skills have been found to be universal, regardless of the scripts to which children are exposed (Harste and Carey, 1979).

Early childhood literacy scholars have also explored how bilingual children in immigrant communities and schools develop early print knowledge and literacy across two scripts (Gort, 2006; Kenner, 1999, 2004; Kenner and Kress, 2003; Mulvihill, 2014; Nam, 2018; Reyes, 2001; Soltero-González and Butvilofsky, 2016). Several studies have found that the progression of early literacy in young simultaneous bilinguals develops in similar ways across two languages (Soltero-González and Butvilofsky, 2016). Additionally, Wang (2008), who researched her two trilingual children’s use of Mandarin, French and English, and Kim (2014), in a study of her daughter’s acquisition of Korean, French and English, each make reference to the development of triliteracy skills in the home context. However, the primary focus for both of these studies is on oral language use rather than print knowledge.

Early print knowledge: Letters and directionality

In their Signs of Difference project carried out in London, Kenner and her colleagues followed six children between the ages of five and six who were simultaneously becoming biliterate in English, their dominant language, alongside their respective home languages of Mandarin, Arabic and Spanish (Kenner, 2004; Kenner and Kress, 2003). Through their year-long observations in the children’s homes, community language schools and mainstream classrooms, they found that these children were able to form and maintain different hypotheses about the letters and directionality of the two scripts they were learning. While the children sometimes integrated letters across scripts, this was viewed as experimentation more than confusion. Kenner (2004: 52) suggested that they were exhibiting ‘the tendency to explore the range of possible meanings of a symbol, and to manipulate symbols both within and across semiotic modes in order to identify similarities and differences.' In a more recent study utilizing a similar peer-tutoring method to Kenner’s, Nam (2018) confirmed these findings as she examined 10 young simultaneous bilinguals’ understanding of and ability to develop different working hypotheses for Korean and English writing scripts. Both studies showed that bilingual children are able to easily differentiate between the letters and logographic characteristics used for each language’s script.

Similarly, the studies by Kenner (2004) and Kenner and Kress (2003) found that bilingual children who learn two scripts with different directionality are able to readily distinguish between them and apply them appropriately in their writing. Although they may sometimes ‘experience “moments of transition” due to the co-presence of both systems’, again this is seen more as exploration than confusion (Kenner, 2004: 55). This conclusion is further supported by studies of monolingual children who have also been found to experiment with directionality and letter reversal (Bloodgood, 1999; Martens, 1999; Yang and Noel, 2006). Kenner and Kress (2003: 199) argue that children who develop biliteracy in scripts with different directionalities benefit from a ‘visual and actional flexibility … rather than becoming conventionalized in one direction only.’ Kenner (2004: 55) asserts that promoting biliteracy gives children ‘an expanded potential for directionality, in the sense that both left-right and right-left directionality were always available to them.’

Name writing: Expression of social identity

Some of the first words that children take an interest in writing are their own names and those of family members (Clay, 1975; Kress, 1997; Martens, 1999). Indeed, this is a practice that is encouraged by adults working in early years education. Name writing has thus been a common theme in studies of directionality, orientation and letter formation in monolingual English-speaking children (Bloodgood, 1999; Martens, 1999; Yang and Noel, 2006). Children begin showing interest in writing their names around the ages of three to five (Martens, 1999), with more children starting to sign their drawings around age five during kindergarten years (Yang and Noel, 2006). Since children do not necessarily have knowledge of individual letter names or sounds when they learn to write their names conventionally, their initial name writing is logographic. That is, they pay attention to the shape of their complete name, not dissecting the letters that make up their name (Bloodgood, 1999). While most studies have focused on the technical aspect of name writing, research into monolingual children’s name writing highlights the important role that this act plays in terms of a child’s identity. As Bloodgood (1999: 342, italics in original) writes, ‘name writing is a social accomplishment that establishes our literate identity.’

Name writing as an act of identity is perhaps even more salient among multilingual children. Kabuto’s (2008: 184) study highlights how her five-year-old bilingual child signed her name in both Japanese and English scripts as a way to exhibit ‘inclusive and exclusive power.’ Adding her name in Japanese to her school assignments gave her the leverage to distinguish herself as a bilingual and biliterate unlike her teachers and classmates, who would not understand the script. Studies have also explored young bilingual children’s awareness of audience in their emergent literacy practices (Axelrod and Cole, 2018; Kenner, 2004; Wagner, 2018). For instance, a five-year-old bilingual girl in Kenner’s study wrote words in both Mandarin and English on her drawings for her sister and mother—a spontaneous writing practice reflecting both her bilingual identity as well as her sense of bilingual audience.

The gap

I have attempted to contextualize this article by reviewing relevant research on monolingual and bilingual children’s emergent writing practices with special attention paid to letter formation, directionality, name writing and bilingual identity with a sense of audience. Overall, the field would benefit from more studies about the ways simultaneous biliterate children develop their writing ability. After all, in today’s globalized world, the reality and relevance of raising multilingual/multiliterate children is becoming increasingly important. Beyond this, however, there is a discernable lack of research into the emergent writing practices of simultaneous trilingual children. Thus, this current study about my son’s simultaneous triliteracy development is an important addition to the field.

Method

Motherscholar research

In this study, I draw on motherscholarship, or parent-research more broadly, which has been gaining recognition as not only a legitimate approach to research but also as a powerful one uniquely suited to navigating intimate contexts previously largely discounted (Gumbs et al., 2016; Rich, 1976). Reflecting on her experience of studying her own daughter’s bilingual development, Kabuto (2008) justified the use of parent-research being capable of yielding deeper and more authentic insights than would be available to researchers in school-based and other formalized settings. In Kennedy and Romo’s (2013: 114) study, Kennedy similarly asserted the importance of her ‘insider’ role as a mother to the primary subject of their study, as this enabled her ‘to have countless opportunities to observe Nelia in intimate situations, realize nuances present in family communication, and connect the personal to the cultural.’

However, motherscholars who choose to study their own children also face distinct challenges, particularly around positionality and ethics in their intersecting roles as mothers and researchers. Kennedy and Romo (2013) dealt with these challenges by including an outsider (Romo) as a co-researcher. In Kabuto’s (2008) case, she details how she made her daughter into her own co-researcher of sorts, as opposed to an object of study, by giving primacy to her opinions about what would and would not be recorded and analysed. In my own research, I too have struggled with issues such as having distinct power over my child, my study subject. Although my child seemed to have little interest in what I was doing, I made a point of having open conversations with him about my research when he became old enough to understand. Nevertheless, there were moments when I had to make difficult decisions, e.g. whether to use his real name in this article. As a scholar, I considered using his real name essential in this article to accurately demonstrate his experimentation with name writing in three scripts. However, as a mother, I worried that there was a degree of coercion as he might not fully understand the meaning of it. Like previous motherscholars, I have sought to mitigate other challenges, such as intrusiveness, by collecting data only around ‘already occurring routine activities’ (Bauer, 2000: 108) and by keeping detailed observation notes in the event that recordings are considered disruptive (Wang, 2008).

Ethnographic approach

To examine my child’s emergent writing practices, I have relied upon an ethnographic case study approach (Simon and Dippo, 1986; Yin, 2014). This approach, suitable ‘for structuring one’s experience of a social situation’ (Simon and Dippo, 1986: 201), enabled me to use myself as a research tool in understanding my child’s language and literacy practices at home by situating them against a larger sociocultural and -political context. Given the concerns cited above and the potential for bias in researching my own child, an ethnographic approach was also particularly appropriate for this study because it challenges, fundamentally, the notion of objectivity and legitimizes the insertion of my subjectivities into the research process (Glesne, 1999). As a parent-researcher, as Wood (2015: 69) astutely points out, ‘the objective observer, too, is biased, and is generally a person who embraces their subjects just as passionately as the parent does their own child. The difference is that for the parent this relationship is transparent, obvious and revealed.’

Additionally, because maintaining a heightened awareness of my positionality and my multiple, complex roles was critical, I made a point of keeping detailed notes for myself and routinely reflecting on my actions throughout the process. Inevitably, I experienced dilemmas regarding the frequency of my recordings or my ability to remain ‘present’ as a parent. I sometimes caught myself intently focused on gathering richer data for my research, losing sight of what it means to enjoy my child’s experiences in the moment as a mother. Reflexivity, as a practice, enabled me to realize this and ultimately led me to reduce the number of recordings that I made around the time my son turned three. After that, I relied more on detailed observation notes that I would take down at a later time, when I was not actively with my child.

Language environments from birth to six

With a stay-home paternal grandmother, who was the main Farsi-speaking caregiver, and a mother (myself) committed to exclusively using Korean in the household, Kian had sufficient exposure to two home languages from birth to age six. Although there were variations in terms of how much each home language was used on a given day, his grandmother’s Farsi-only and my Korean-only practices encouraged him to use those languages—rather than English—at home. Of course, Kian used primarily Korean when staying in Korea during the summer months, when he also attended Korean preschool. He attended a Farsi language school on Sundays for two hours, starting just after his fifth birthday, and a Korean language school on Saturdays for four hours, beginning at 5;5.² These community language schools emphasized oral language development as well as emergent reading and writing skills. His formal learning in English started when he was 2;5 at an English immersion preschool, which he attended for a total of eight months until just after his fourth birthday. He then began prekindergarten (PreK) at 4;5 and kindergarten (K) at 5;5 in an English immersion state elementary school. He was identified as an ‘English learner’ when he started K and started receiving English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) services. Table 1 summarizes the language environments from birth to six.

Table 1.

Language environments.

Age (yr;mo)	Farsi and Korean at home in US	Grandmother's home in Korea	preschool in Korea (mostly in summer)	Farsi language school in US	Korean language school in US	US preschool (English immersion)	US school (English immersion)
0–0;6	X
0;7–1	X
1–1;6	X	X
1;7–2	X	X
2–2;6	X	X				X
2;7–3	X					X
3–3;6	X	X	X			X
3;7–4	X	X	X			X
4–4;6	X	X	X			X	X
4;7–5	X						X
5–5;6	X	X	X	X			X
5;7–6	X			X	X		X

From birth, the home environment was rich with literacy. For example, I read English and Korean books with Kian on a daily basis, and his grandmother also read Farsi books to him on a daily basis. On his own, he was often observed reading illustrations of books written in any of the three languages, which he did voluntarily and independently several times a day. Alphabet charts in all three scripts were posted at his eye level in a play area at home.

Data sources and collection

In examining emergent writing practices across three scripts from age three to six, I accumulated approximately 200 audiovisual recordings as well as 150 images of Kian’s drawings and writing primarily collected at home during those three years. Here, writing is defined as any symbol that he created to which he gave meaning, including communicative marks and mock letters. Data included what he spontaneously produced at home as well as what he brought from school (i.e. PreK, Kindergarten and his two community language schools). In addition to artefacts and video and audio recordings, I included my observation notes related to any writing events as data. Table 2 summarizes these types of data sources and collection periods.

Table 2.

Data sources and collection period.

Data sources	Where data originated from	Collection period
Video, audio recordings	Home	3 to 6 years old
Artefacts related to writing	Home	3 to 6
	PreK and K classes	4;5–5;3 & 5;5–6
	Farsi and Korean language classes	5;5–6
Observation notes	Home	3 to 6

Data analysis

To examine emergent writing practices across three scripts from age three to six, I repeated an iterative process of viewing and reading raw data. Rooted in a constant comparative approach, I annotated the data against theoretical frameworks and themes from the literature. Incorporating the social semiotic concept of treating each script as a mode and translanguaging theory to understand how multilingual children draw on all linguistic repertoires in making sense of their worlds allowed me to code data related to letter recognition in three languages as visual overlaps across scripts. Through this inductive process, I drafted emergent codes. Then, themes derived from the data were collapsed and modified multiple times (Miles et al., 2014; Yin, 2014) as seen in the coding manuals in Table 3, directionality as a code was not developed until the second coding manual. In addition, the third iteration shows multi-levelled codes with more details.

Table 3.

Progression of coding manuals.

Iteration #1	Iteration #2	Iteration #3
1. Recognizing letters in 3 languages2. Practising words3. Practising phrases/sentences4. Name writing in 3 languages	1. Identifying visual overlaps across three different alphabets2. Directionality3. Representing simultaneous worlds4. Dotted lines to practice 5. Copying and practising6. Strings of letters	1. Treating letters in three writing systems as visual symbols 1-1. Identifying visual overlaps and correlations 1-2. Copying letters and words like drawing2. Awareness of distinctly different writing systems2-1. Being flexible with directionality3. Awareness of audiences and being proud of simultaneous worlds3-1. Language mixing to please audience

Findings

In this section, findings for the research question—How does a trilingual child make sense of and communicate in his literate world from age three to six?—are addressed. In summary, qualitative analysis of the data showed Kian (a) recognized that different orthographic symbols belonged to each script as well as made linkages between them, (b) applied different directionality in scripts but with flexibility and (c) stamped a trilingual identity and met different audiences’ needs through name writing. In discussing the results, the developmental pathways he followed in his emergent writing in three distinctively different scripts are also identified.

Recognizing different orthographic symbols across scripts with linkages

Kian showed a clear understanding that each written system has a unique set of semiotic symbols. However, he also recognized that some of the orthographic symbols in Korean and Farsi resemble some letters in English. The following exchange happened in front of the three alphabet charts on one wall in the play area at home (described above). At 4;10, he pointed to the consonant ㄷ in the Korean alphabet chart that was hung above the Farsi alphabet chart and said that it looked like the English letter C:

Kian:	엄마, 이건 C 같다, 맞아?	Mom, it looks like a C, right?
Me:	어떤 거?	Which one?
Kian:	이거, 다다 할 때 하는 거.	This one (pointing toㄷ/ digut/) when saying ‘DaDa.’

About one month later, in the same play area, his paternal grandmother attempted to show him how to write his name in Farsi,

[Kian]. He recognized the initial letter,

[K], in his Farsi name and made an association with the English letter J. While listening to the conversation next to them, I interjected and started speaking to him in Korean. He responded in Korean to me and repeated the same information about how the Farsi letter resembled the English letter:

Grandmother:		Kian, your name is like this.
Kian:		Does this have a K? (pointing to the first letter in the Farsi name)
Grandmother:		Right.
Kian:		Grandmother, this is like a J, right?
(conversation stopped and I interjected)
Kian:	엄마 이거 J 같다.	Mom, this looks like a J.

As seen in the conversations above, Kian was aware that the writing systems of the three languages were different, but he also attempted to find commonalities between some of them and integrate them into a single written system. It is important to note that he used the wording ‘같다’ or ‘’ [looks like] instead of ‘is’ to describe the resemblance between the scripts. This further exemplifies the interpretation of his understanding of three distinct different scripts. Figure 1 illustrates these plausible associations. Examples (a) and (b) are from the above exchanges, while example (c) is from a later instance.

Figure 1.

Graphic linkages formed between Korean and Farsi letters with English letters.

It is also worth pointing out that he considered the English script as the base on which he overlaid Korean and Farsi scripts. In other words, he did not talk about Korean and Farsi letters resembling each other, although he could have potentially made similar visual associations between them, especially given more exposure to and advanced oral proficiency in both home languages compared to English prior to starting PreK at 4;6. His reliance on the English script in making sense of other scripts could be attributed to the fact that English was the script he had first formally learned to read and write in his English-only preschool, which he started at 2;6 in the US. That is, although the home environment was rich with literacy in all three languages, he had not been explicitly instructed to read and write in any of the languages, including writing his name, until after he started PreK. This was partlly because he seemed to enjoy reading images more than letters.

Applying different directionality in scripts but with flexibility

Similar to the ways in which Kian understood that the three languages used different scripts, he was aware without being explicitly directed and instructed of the different directionality of Farsi to Korean and English (which have the same directionality). This awareness was demonstrated by the ways he turned book pages when engaged in independent reading. When he became more interested in writing, he also exhibited accurate directionality of the line depending on the script he wrote without being explicitly told. For example, he would copy a string of English letters from the alphabet chart on a white board from left to right. Later examples of him writing his name also show that while he started out writing his Korean name at the far left side and toward the bottom of the page, he began writing his Farsi name right above where 안 the last letter of his Korean name ended. This importantly demonstrates his clear understanding of the different spatial orientations required when writing in two scripts with opposing line directionalities.

Despite demonstrating a correct grasp of both text and line directionality in three different scripts, Kian experimented with directionality when writing. Figure 2(a) shows his signature on a self-portrait that he drew at 4;9. We can see that the English letters in his name were reversed and written from right to left. Another drawing completed at 5;7, Figure 2(b), shows that although he signed his English name with conventional directionality, his left-facing letter K in his initial was written backwards. This mirror writing was also found in one instance where he wrote the Farsi word [father] in a birthday card at 5;8. As depicted in Figure 2(c), he wrote the word six times on his drawing using correct line and letter directionality but reversed it in one case (inside the rectangular box that the dinosaur is holding). This experimentation with the directionality of letters, lines, and numerals across languages coincided with other demonstrations of him knowing the conventional rules for writing in each script. Observations, for instance, showed Kian self-correcting letters that were written with an incorrect directionality. Hence, rather than positing that simultaneously acquiring three scripts created confusion for Kian, I interpret this as a positive developmental phenomenon akin to that found in monolingual emergent writers experimenting with directionality in English.

Figure 2.

Experimenting and being flexible with directionality in writing scripts.

Figure 2(d) is an intriguing example illustrating his flexible manipulation of directionality in writing the English word ‘boo’ at age 5;9 as part of an assignment for Korean language school. In this diary template, he was asked to illustrate his day then write a corresponding caption below using a square box for each syllable of Korean text. Since it was near Halloween, he drew children trick-or-treating along with a jack-o’-lantern, house, dinosaur, witch and ghost. He then superimposed the word ‘BOO’ in big print across his illustration. It is worth noting that the letters in the word were connected with a curved line, and he embedded the same word in smaller print within the second letter but with reverse directionality. The word with an unconventional directionality in English can also be seen above the shining moon and star. It can be speculated that he might have intended to add a special effect by representing the sound that a ghost makes in two different directionalities. Again, this does not seem to indicate confusion; he clearly knew how to write the word correctly. Rather, it suggests to me a playful and confident manipulation of text directionality to meet his various purposes in writing—behaviour that was probably bolstered by his early exposure to different scripts.

Stamping a trilingual identity through name writing

As the data presented above also illustrate, one of the first words Kian wished to practise and eventually learned to write independently was his name. Figure 3(a) shows his earlier attempts at 4;2 to write his name in Korean by creating two letters expressed with indecipherable horizontal and vertical lines written in-between the English letters N/M and F/E, as well as on a family portrait (Figure 3(b)) that he drew for an English preschool assignment. Upon starting PreK at 4;6, he showed growing interest in writing his English name as seen in his experimentation with line and letter directionality in Figure 2(a) and (b), completed at 4;9 and 5;7, respectively.

Figure 3.

Earlier attempts to write his name in Korean and Farsi.

Whereas he learned to write his name in English at school, he had some opportunities to see and write his name in Korean and Farsi outside of school. Earlier, a frequent practice he enjoyed when learning to write his name in two home languages was copying his name by tracing a dotted line that I drew for him. His preschool teacher in Korea first taught him how to write his name in Korean this way at 4;3, but after returning to the US, he requested that I continue the practice for his name in both home languages. Figure 3(c) shows a tracing of his first name in Farsi that he completed at 5;1. While it took him much practice and experimentation, especially with directionality in his pathway, to correctly write his English first name, the literacy artefacts I collected showed much practice with letter formation until he was able to conventionally write his name in both Farsi and Korean scripts.

Once Kian learned how to write his name independently in three languages, he started to sign his work and his belongings in two or even all three scripts at times. While he wrote his Korean name in full, 최기안, he used only his first name in Farsi and English, as in and Kian. It could be that he learned to write his Korean name this way from his Korean teacher while in Korea. It could also be because Korean names come in a three-syllable clustered set in a way that might be distinct. As seen in Figure 4(a), after completing a drawing of a Korean Air plane landing on a rainy day (4;9), he signed his name right below the aeroplane first in English written backwards along with his Korean name above it. Figure 4(b) is a picture of the cover of his composition notebook that he used frequently at home. On the day he won this notebook (a prize at a sports event at the Korean language school, 5;8) he took it to his room and immediately signed the cover page with his name in English, Korean and Farsi without adult prompting.

Figure 4.

Signing bi- or tri-lingually on in-and-out-of-school work.

Signing his in-class work in more than two scripts continued throughout his kindergarten year. To my knowledge, his teachers in his PreK and kindergarten classes, including his ESOL teacher, did not speak any languages other than English and did not seem to address the linguistic diversity of the students. Regardless of this environment, he continued expressing his multilingual identity in this manner. Figure 4(c) is an image of a reading comprehension worksheet along with a booklet he completed in his ESOL class at 5;7. He wrote his English name in the stapled booklet with his Korean name written in big letters at the bottom left of the worksheet. Figure 4(d) is another example of his in-school work, a bridge to which he added his name in three languages at 5;8, which went unnoticed by his kindergarten teacher as I later found out during a teacher-parent conference. Moreover, Figure 2(b) presented above borders in-and-out-of-school work as I encouraged him to complete a poster about fire safety for a school competition at home. In it, he signed his name in all three languages, Korean at the bottom with Farsi at the top, at 5;7. It is worth noting that, similar to the way he added special scary effects by writing the English word ‘boo’ with an unconventional directionality (Figure 2(d)), he added special effects by decorating the top of most of the vertical lines in the three scripts of his name with flames.

Kian expressed agency in representing his out-of-school multilingual self in an English-only school setting by signing his name in all scripts on his schoolwork. It is unclear, however, whether he would have developed this agency without the encouragement of adults at home, who routinely made efforts to bridge his different linguistic and cultural worlds. For instance, I started labelling his school belongings with his name written in two or three scripts while he was in PreK. One day, at 4;11, he started noticing his name written bilingually and wanted to emulate it himself and show it to his PreK teacher, ‘엄마, 나 한국 이름 쓰고 싶어요. 엄마, 오늘 내 이름 봤거든. 여기에. 도시락…이거 내일 선생님한테 가서 보여줄거야’. [Mom, I would like to write my name in Korean. Mom, I saw my name today. Here (pointing to the lid of a new lunch container) the lunch container … tomorrow, I will show this to my teacher]. In fact, to my knowledge, this was the only time he used Korean and Farsi at school. He reported to me that he occasionally spoke Korean with his Korean peer who was in his ESOL class but only for few months, and he spoke only English at school despite having peers who spoke both Korean and Farsi.

Signing his names on both in-school and out-of-school artefacts like the ones above were expressions of his identity as a multilingual. He was purposeful, depending on the context, and had specific readers in mind when signing his name or writing a family member’s name in certain scripts. A clear example of this can be found when all the family members were sitting in the living room of my sister-in-law’s home in another state. At 5;9, he drew almost identical pictures of city scenery with palm and coconut trees as well as portraits of him and either his mother or his grandmother having a good time. But the one with his Korean name on top was a gift for me (Figure 5(a)), whereas the one with his Farsi name was for his grandmother (Figure 5(b)). Figure 5(c) is another example of Kian making an effort to meet different audiences’ needs by signing his name in specific scripts. Completed at 5;11, it shows a picture of a scoring sheet for a card game that he prepared in the play area while waiting for me to complete housework in the kitchen. To entice me to play the card game with him and to please me, he independently wrote 최자영, my full name in Korean, as well as putting his Korean name on the top of the page in big print. What is also seen is his English writing of Kian and Jayoung, in small print just below the actual scoring matrix, which is expressed by three rows of a plus sign.

Figure 5.

Name writing to meet audience needs.

Discussion

This ethnographic case study of my son, an emergent simultaneous trilingual and triliterate, illustrates the development of his emergent literacy skills across three scripts. This was achieved with little formal instruction in the two home languages. As my research confirms, his developing triliteracy is consistent with what we already know about spontaneous biliteracy among bilingual children who naturally draw comparisons between and notice differences in two different writing systems without explicitly being taught (Gort, 2006; Reyes, 2001). Likewise, the way Kian made connections between similar-shaped letters across scripts is similar to the development of biliterate children (Kenner, 2004; Kenner and Kress, 2003).

My study confirms what is put forth by translanguaging theory, showing how Kian engaged in a flexible and creative process of letter designing by building on his linguistic repertoires across all three languages (García and Wei, 2015). Analysed through a social semiotic lens so as to consider each script as a mode, we can see how these practices ‘[encourage] the synesthetic potentials of the child in their transformative, creative actions’ (Kress, 1997: 29). Kian also paid attention to the visual cues of scripts, regardless of the type of script, suggesting that learning to write letters in different scripts should not confuse children. Young children perceiving letters as logograms has also been well supported by emergent literacy studies on young mono- and bi-lingual children (Kenner and Kress, 2003; Nam, 2018). Nevertheless, he relied on the English script in making sense of other scripts without making similar visual associations between the two home languages. He did so even when he had developed advanced oral proficiency in both home languages compared to English prior to starting PreK at 4;6. This finding suggests the far-reaching effects of monolingual practices in preschools in terms of constraining multilingual children moving between scripts and languages and acquiring different orthographies.

Furthermore, this article highlights how Kian was not only able to use the correct directionality in scripts but also experimented with even more flexibility than has been found in studies of simultaneous biliterate children acquiring two opposing directionalities (Kenner, 2004; Kenner and Kress, 2003). In the process of learning to write letters in three scripts, he played with letter as well as line directionality as monolingual and biliterate children do (Bloodgood, 1999; Kenner, 2004; Martens, 1999; Yang and Noel, 2006). However, some of the ways in which Kian experimented with directionality in writing words such as “boo” were distinctive. That is, he did not seem to be confused with the directionality of the English word “boo”. Instead, he wrote it in both correct and opposite directionalities as if to amplify scary effects in his drawing about the special occasion. It can be speculated that he naturally developed this flexibility because of his triliteracy in three scripts with two opposing directionalities, which afforded him more leverage to be creative and bold in the symbol designing process. This, again, is an interpretation supported by social semiotic theory (Kress, 1997) as well as by translanguaging theory, which emphasizes the creativity and learning benefits in allowing children to build on their linguistic repertoires across languages (García and Wei, 2015).

Kian’s name writing across three scripts aligns with the findings of research on the name writing of mono- and bi-lingual children. As previous studies outlined in my literature review have shown, his name was one of the first words he learned to write, and he did this before he developed alphabetic knowledge for each of the three scripts. He also exhibited similar developmental patterns while perfecting his name writing in three scripts with respect to the formation of letters and directionality. These findings contribute to the existing literature in several ways. First, they suggest that he was able to simultaneously master conventional name writing in three different scripts without much confusion and followed similar developmental pathways in each script regardless of their stark differences. For example, Kian seemed to initially understand his names as images rather than words composed of individual letters, but that is consistent with monolingual literacy development. Second, the ways he translanguaged to different scripts when signing his name for linguistically different audiences (García and Wei, 2015) has not been extensively discussed in the literature but is worth exploring further. This practice is similar to Kian’s verbal translanguaging, which I have examined in previous studies (Choi, 2018, 2019). Third, the findings show how a trilingual child’s identity may be expressed by signing his schoolwork in three scripts. These findings about name writing illustrate the importance of paying attention to signing in the scripts with which multilingual children are familiar. As their name and/or their family members’ names in the scripts could be the only words that many children ages four to five can independently write, the findings urge researchers and practitioners to go beyond the developmental pathways that name writing literature has thus far explored. Instead, it is worth examining the deeper, more sophisticated, and nuanced functions of name writing in all available scripts with which multilingual children engage—particularly the ways in which this act signals multilingual identity and is adapted to meet different audience needs.

Implications

This detailed and longitudinal examination of my simultaneous trilingual child’s emergent writing practices across three scripts provides rich insights into educational practices for multilingual children at preschool and school. Kian made visual associations between the three scripts to which he was exposed in and out of school and expressed his triliterate identity by signing his name in them. However, signing his schoolwork occasionally in two other home languages was the only extent to which he used home languages at school. The fact that Kian and his same-language peers seemed to use English only points to the entrenched monolingual orientation found in many of our schools. Such settings preclude, dissuade and prevent linguistically diverse children from expressing themselves while denying them important opportunities and contexts for developing emergent biliteracy within their curriculum. Kenner (1999) showed how this could be possible in a multilingual nursery in London by inviting parents to bring in texts from home even when the teacher did not speak languages of the three- to four-year-old children. When the home literacy materials were available in the classroom and when the children were encouraged to interact with them, they wanted to attempt to write their names and the names of their family members in both scripts. In addition, the analysis of a number of conversations that took place in Mulvihill’s (2014) bilingual kindergarten classroom demonstrated the linguistic flexibility as well as the metalinguistic awareness that these young Spanish-English bilingual children developed. This was possible as Mulvihill (2014) challenged the language separation policy that was instituted in her school and instead encouraged the children to make sophisticated connections between scripts. Furthermore, the research on biliteracy development in a transitional bilingual education programme in an elementary school by Reyes (2001) highlighted the importance of encouraging all children, including those perceived as English dominant, to develop biliteracy. A powerful example can be seen when a girl who was not expected to write in Spanish (she was categorized as a dominant English speaker) readily started to write in Spanish when encouraged by a bilingual peer. As Reyes (2001: 106) put it, ‘if teachers or, in this case, more competent others don’t promote a language, students simply won’t attempt it’.

Conclusion

This ethnography has focused on a simultaneous trilingual child’s emergent writing practices. It is limited in that it reports on only one child whose circumstances were unique and privileged with respect to the resources and support for language and literacy at home. Although I adopted a rigorous approach as a qualitative researcher, at times it was also hard to detach myself, a motherscholar, from the research subject. Nevertheless, this kind of deep, longitudinal engagement with a child in his home environment makes it possible to provide a detailed, layered analysis of his emergent writing. Through my analysis, I have aimed to demystify common assumptions about simultaneous trilingual and triliteracy development in young children. That is, as overwhelming and intimidating as it might sound, a trilingual child can concurrently develop emergent literacy in all the languages to which he is exposed without becoming confused by the different writing systems. Through my personal account of my own son’s emergent literacy in three scripts, I hope to have contributed to the larger conversations concerning the many bi- and multilingual children whose potential to become multilingual and multiliterate has been inhibited (Reyes, 2001). More research studies that examine the emergent writing practices of the growing number of trilingual children in an early childhood school context would be a significant addition to a field that has so far focused on biliteracy practices.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am appreciative of insightful feedback provided by all the editors and anonymous reviewers. I would like to extend a special thanks to one of the editors, Dr Guy Merchant, for his detailed suggestions on the last version of my manuscript. I am also indebted to Allison Sullivan, my graduate research assistant, for her critical comments on my work.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jayoung Choi

Notes

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