March/April 2002 | NW REPORT

Teaching the Traits of

Spanish Writing

Imagine your child arrives for the first day of school and she is told: Forget what you’ve learned from your parents. Forget what you’ve learned from your culture. Forget your language. Now, listen and learn in this unfamiliar language, and don’t fall behind the others who already know this stuff.

This is the way it must feel to a native Spanish-speaking child arriving at school with high hopes, only to be told his native language is a deficit, rather than a benefit, says Will Flores, bilingual assessment associate for the Laboratory’s Assessment Program.

"If you tell a child that his language doesn’t count, then you’re telling him that his parents and his culture don’t count—that he doesn’t count," says Flores. But if you regard his native language and culture as teaching resources, allowing him to learn, read, and write in his first language as well as in English, you will improve his ability to succeed in both languages and in other academic areas.

Research shows that "if kids learn to write in academic language in their native language, they’ll transfer that ability into English and other subject areas because of the cognitive flexibility they acquire through the process," Flores says. "Problem solving, questioning, theorizing; all of those things we do in science and mathematics, we do in writing."

To help teachers build students’ Spanish writing ability into a foundation for English-language acquisition and other academic learning, Flores teamed up with other bilingual specialists and classroom teachers to develop a Spanish writing assessment model to guide instruction. The team examined what research reveals about reading and writing in Spanish, evaluated dozens of student writing samples, and piloted the model in real bilingual classrooms.

The model they created, Traits of Effective Spanish Writing, is similarly structured to the venerable 6+1 Trait™ Writing assessment model, yet it has important differences, reflecting authentic Spanish writing patterns. While the basic traits of good writing are much the same in Spanish and English—such as ideas, organization, conventions, and so forth—the characteristics of the traits can be quite dissimilar between the two languages. For example, conventions can be different, such as placing a question mark at the beginning and end of a Spanish interrogative sentence.

The team identified seven traits of good Spanish writing—tema e ideas, organización, tono y estilo, uso del lenguaje, fluidez, gramática y ortografía, and presentación—and identified detailed criteria for five levels of proficiency in each of the traits. Like the English-language model, Traits of Effective Spanish Writing fosters a common vocabulary for talking about writing, and it imparts meaningful feedback that can be used to adjust instruction and improve writing.

For more information, visit the Web site, www.nwrel.org/assessment. You can order Traits of Effective Spanish Writing, a guidebook for teachers, Spanish Picture Books, a bibliography of Spanish literature, and other material from the NWREL Products Catalog Online, www.nwrel.org/comm/catalog/.

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