Stone Samantha, Utah State University
Education
The present study investigated language growth over the course of 3 years for 50 Spanish-English Bilingual children who were learning English as their second language. Children were asked to retell a story in English and in Spanish at 6 time points (before and after Kindergarten, First, and Second Grades). The stories were transcribed and utterances were coded as to whether they contained mazing behaviors such as revisions, false starts and corrections and also coded for the level of syntactic complexity (simple or complex) they contained. Simple sentences contained one main verb, and complex sentences contained two or more main verbs. The presence of mazing is thought to indicate hesitation or difficulty in lexical retrieval and might be expected to occur more in complex than simple sentences. Further, we hypothesized that children would evidence more mazing behaviors in their non-native language (English) than their native language (Spanish). Ultimately, we theorized that children’s use of mazes in English would decrease over time, as they became more proficient in their second language (English). Some of the children were receiving instruction in schools classified as “English Immersion” models, and others were in schools that incorporated a “Transitional” approach to instruction. Results are discussed in terms of current theoretical models of bilingual language acquisition and variations in outcomes as a function of current instructional models.