Bilingual students are underrepresented in gifted and talented (GT) programs, and language/literacy research on these students is scarce. This study examined academic language in expository writing of 65 GT students, including 32 bilinguals, in Grades 4–8. Outcomes at the word, phrase, sentence, and text levels were compared for bilinguals’ versus monolinguals’ English writing, and bilinguals’ English versus Spanish writing. In addition, two students’ texts were explored qualitatively. In English, bilinguals and monolinguals did not significantly differ on any measure. Bilinguals scored higher in English than Spanish on most traditional word- and sentence-level measures, were equal in lexical diversity, and varied at the phrase level. English and Spanish writing was similar in content and structure, suggesting transfer of text-level skills. The qualitative assessment highlighted diverse attempts at information condensing and author distance with varying success, again with similar outcomes at the text level.
AlbertsonL. R.BillingsleyF. F. (2001). Using strategy instruction and self-regulation to improve gifted students’ creative writing. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 12(2), 90–102.
2.
BatchelorK. (2018). “My story came to life!”: How multimodality can inspire revision in writing. Gifted Child Today, 41(3), 136–148. https://doi.org/10.1177/1076217518768850
3.
BiberD.GrayB. (2016). Grammatical complexity in academic English: Linguistic change in writing. Cambridge University Press.
4.
BiberD.GrayB.PoonponK. (2011). Should we use characteristics of conversation to measure grammatical complexity in L2 writing development?TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 5–35.
5.
BriceA. E.ShaunessyE.HughesC.McHattonP. A.RatliffM. A. (2008). What language discourse tells us about bilingual adolescents: A study of students in gifted programs and students in general education programs. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 32(1), 7–33.
6.
BushongR. W. (2010). The academic word list reorganized for Spanish-speaking English language learners [Master’s thesis, University of Central Florida]. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/1598/
7.
ButvilofskyS.SparrowW. L. (2012). Training teachers to evaluate emerging bilingual students’ biliterate writing. Language and Education, 26(5), 383–403.
8.
CookB. G.CookL.TherrienW. J. (2018). Group-difference effect sizes: Gauging the practical importance of findings from group-experimental research. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 33(2), 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/ldrp.12167
9.
CovingtonM. A.McFallJ. D. (2010). Cutting the Gordian knot: The moving-average type–token ratio (MATTR). Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 17(2), 94–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/09296171003643098
10.
CoxheadA. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238.
11.
CrossonA. C.MatsumuraL. C.CorrentiR.Arlotta-GuerreroA. (2012). The quality of writing tasks and students’ use of academic language in Spanish. The Elementary School Journal, 112(3), 469–496.
12.
CTB/McGraw-Hill. (2006). Las Links Español [Standardized test]. Data Recognition Corporation.
13.
CumminsJ. (2014). Beyond language: Academic communication and student success. Linguistics and Education, 26, 145–154.
14.
DanzakR. L. (2011a). The integration of lexical, syntactic, and discourse features in bilingual adolescents’ writing: An exploratory approach. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42(4), 491–505.
15.
DanzakR. L. (2011b). Defining identities through multiliteracies: ELL teens narrate their immigration experiences as graphic stories. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55(3), 187–196.
16.
DanzakR. L.ArféB. (2016). Globally minded text production: Bilingual, expository writing of Italian adolescents learning English. Topics in Language Disorders, 36(1), 35–51.
17.
DanzakR. L.BokelF.CerveraH. (2019). Translanguaging the gulf: Teens in Mexico and the United States collaborate to create multilingual, expository texts. Sunshine State TESOL Journal, 12(2), 16–27.
18.
DanzakR. L.WilkinsonL. W. (2017). Finding Diego: A bilingual student integrates school, language, and identity. Journal of Latinos and Education, 16(1), 51–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2016.1179188
19.
DePalmaM. J.RingerJ. M. (2011). Toward a theory of adaptive transfer: Expanding disciplinary discussions of “transfer” in second-language writing and composition studies. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20(2), 134–147.
20.
Ecker-LysterM.NiilekselaC. (2017). Enhancing gifted education for underrepresented students. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 40(1), 79–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353216686216
21.
FangZ.SchleppegrellM.MooreJ. (2013). The linguistic challenge of learning across disciplines. In StoneC. A.SillimanE. R.EhrenB. J.WallachG. P. (Eds.), The handbook of language and literacy (2nd ed., pp. 302–322). Guilford Press.
22.
FergadiotisG.WrightH. H.WestT. M. (2013). Measuring lexical diversity in narrative discourse of people with aphasia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(2), 397–408. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2013/12-0083)
23.
FloresN. (2019). From academic language to language architecture: Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in research and practice. Theory Into Practice, 59(1), 22–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1665411
24.
GarrettL.MoltzenR. (2011). Writing because I want to, not because I have to: Young gifted writers’ perspectives on the factors that “matter” in developing expertise. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 10(1), 165–180.
25.
GevaE.WienerJ. (2015). Psychological assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse children: A practitioner’s guide. Springer.
26.
GibbonsJ. (1999). Register aspects of literacy in Spanish. Written Language and Literacy, 2(1), 63–88.
27.
GrosjeanF. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36(1), 3–15.
28.
Hall-MillsS.ApelK. (2015). Linguistic feature development across grades and genre in elementary writing. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 46(3), 242–255.
29.
HolmS. (1979). A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 6(2), 65–70.
30.
HuntK. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels (NCTE Research Report No. 3). National Council of Teachers of English.
31.
IgnatievaN.ColombiC. (2014). CLAE: El lenguaje académico en México y los Estados Unidos: Un análisis sistémico funcional [CLAE: Academic language in Mexico and the United States: A systemic functional analysis]. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
32.
KapantzoglouM.FergadiotisG.BuenavidesA. A. (2019). Psychometric evaluation of lexical diversity indices in Spanish narrative samples from children with and without developmental language disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62(1), 70–83.
33.
KyleK.CrossleyS. A. (2018). Measuring syntactic complexity in L2 writing using fine-grained clausal and phrasal indices. Modern Language Journal, 102(2), 333–349.
OlthouseJ. M. (2014). Gifted children’s relationships with writing. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 37(2), 171–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353214529044
36.
OlthouseJ. M.EdmundsA. L.SauderA. E. (2014). School stories: How do exemplary teen writers portray academics?Roeper Review, 36(3), 168–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2014.919622
37.
OrlikoffR. F.SchiavettiN.MetzD. E. (2015). Evaluating research in communication disorders (7th ed.). Pearson.
38.
PellegrinoF.CoupéC.MarsicoE. (2011). Across-language perspective on speech information rate. Language, 87(3), 539–558. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2011.0057
39.
PerinD.De La PazS.PiantedosiK. W.PeercyM. (2017). The writing of language minority students: A literature review on its relation to oral proficiency. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 33(5), 465–483. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2016.1247399
40.
Rodríguez-VergaraD. (2013). Metáfora gramatical en el lenguaje académico en español [Grammatical metaphor in Spanish academic language]. Lenguas en Contexto [Languages in Context], 10, 17–23.
41.
ShaunessyE.McHattonP. A.HughesC.BriceA.RatliffM. A. (2007). Understanding the experiences of bilingual, Latino/a adolescents: Voices from gifted and general education. Roeper Review, 29(3), 174–182.
42.
SillimanE. R.Brea-SpahnM. R.DanzakR. L. (2016, November). Academic writing in math and social studies by students with LLD: Orchestrating language complexity [Paper presentation]. Annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL, United States.
43.
SillimanE. R.WilkinsonL. C. (2015). Two challenges of the academic language register for students with language learning disabilities. In BahrR. H.SillimanE. R. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of communication disorders (pp. 291–302). Routledge
44.
SunL.NippoldM. A. (2012). Narrative writing in children and adolescents: Examining the literate lexicon. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 43(1), 2–13. https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2011/10-0099
45.
Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts. (2016). [Computer software]. SALT Software.
46.
UccelliP.GallowayE. P. (2016). Academic language across content areas: Lessons from an innovative assessment and from students’ reflections about language. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(4), 395–404.
47.
UkrainetzT. A. (2015). Contextualized skill intervention framework: The whole and the parts. In UkrainetzT. A. (Ed.), School-age language intervention: Evidence-based practices (pp. 71–114). ProEd.
48.
VelascoP.GarcíaO. (2014). Translanguaging and the writing of bilingual learners. Bilingual Research Journal, 37(1), 6–23.
