Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2010

Spanglish as Literacy Tool: Toward an Understanding of the Potential Role of Spanish-English Code-Switching in the Development of Academic Literacy

Ramón Antonio Martínez The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

This article reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching “or Spanglish” among bilingual Latina/Latino sixth graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles. Analysis of the data revealed significant parallels between the skills embedded in students’ everyday use of Spanglish and the skills that they were expected to master according to California’s sixth-grade English language arts standards. In particular, students displayed an impressive adeptnessat (1) shifting voices for different audiences, and (2) communicating subtle shades of meaning. It is argued that this skillful use of Spanglish could potentially be leveraged as a resource for helping students to further cultivate related academic literacy skills. The article concludes with a discussion of specific implications for how teachers might begin to leverage Spanglish as a pedagogical resource by helping students to recognize, draw on, and extend the skills already embedded intheir everyday use of language.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
2010-11-01
DOI
10.58680/rte201012743
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Open Access
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Topics
writing pedagogy qualitative research multilingual writers literacy studies race and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Curiel et al. (2023)
    Collaborative Translanguaging and Transmodal Literacies: Learning the Language …
    Research in the Teaching of English

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