The Writing of Anglo and Hispanic Fourth and Sixth Graders in Regular, Submersion, and Bilingual Programs
Carlisle, Robert Stephen
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69082
Description
Title
The Writing of Anglo and Hispanic Fourth and Sixth Graders in Regular, Submersion, and Bilingual Programs
Author(s)
Carlisle, Robert Stephen
Issue Date
1986
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Language and Literature
Abstract
The primary purpose of this descriptive cross-sectional study was to describe and rate the writing of Hispanic students in a bilingual program and to compare their writing with that of Hispanic students in a submersion program and with native English speakers in a regular program. The secondary purpose was to investigate the effect that selected mediating variables had on the writing proficiency of native Spanish speakers after the effects of crucial background variables had been accounted for.
The study had two independent variables: grade and program; five dependent variables: rhetorical effectiveness, overall quality of writing, productivity, syntactic maturity, and error frequency; three background variables: economic class, amount of reading material in the home, and the amount of English used in the home; and three mediating variables: rhetorical effectiveness in Spanish, overall quality of writing in Spanish, and reading achievement in English. Sixty-two subjects participated in the study.
Analyses of variance revealed that the sixth graders had significantly higher scores than did the fourth graders on rhetorical effectiveness, overall quality of writing, productivity, and syntactic maturity; no difference obtained between the two grades on error frequency. The students in the regular program had significantly higher scores on rhetorical effectiveness and overall quality of writing than did the submersion program students and the bilingual program students; they also had significantly higher scores on error frequency than did the bilingual program students. The bilingual program students had significantly higher scores on syntactic maturity and productivity than did the submersion program students; no other significant contrasts obtained among the three groups. However, because the submersion program students had significantly higher mean scores on the background variables than did the bilingual program students, an ANCOVA was calculated that equated the two groups of Spanish speakers on those variables. The results of the ANCOVA revealed that the bilingual program students had significantly higher scores than did the submersion program students not only on productivity and syntactic maturity, but also on rhetorical effectiveness. Finally, a multiple regression analysis revealed that rhetorical effectiveness in Spanish was a significant predictor of rhetorical effectiveness in English.
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