Code-Switching Patterns in the Writing-Related Talk of Young Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

This qualitative study examined code-switching patterns in the writing-related talk of 6 emergent Spanish-English bilingual first-grade children. Audio recordings, field notes, and writing artifacts documenting participant activities and language use in Spanish and English writing workshops were gathered over the course of 6 months and analyzed for code-switching prevalence, form, content, and purpose in relation to the writing process. The percentage distribution of oral code switching across the two linguistic contexts suggests a sociolinguistic imbalance between the two languages, wherein English played a prevalent role in the creation of Spanish texts, but Spanish did not appear to have the same utility in the development of English texts. Four general categories of code-switching functions emerged, indicating emergent bilingual writers' (a) evaluation and self-regulation skills, (b) sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence, (c) metalinguistic insights, and (d) use of code switching to indicate a shift in topic, person, or syntactic form. These findings intimate children's capacity to exploit their developing bilingual linguistic repertoire for a variety of academic and social purposes and illuminate the potential of code switching as a cognitive and linguistic resource in the process of writing. © SAGE Publications 2012.