Abstract

CLAVIJO OLARTE, Amparo; FREEMAN, Ann  and  GARCIA OBREGON, Andrea. An exploratory study of punctuation inbilingual children's texts. Colomb. Appl. Linguist. J. [online]. 2004, n.6, pp.106-120. ISSN 0123-4641.

This article describes first and second grade² children's writing and focuses on the use of punctuation as they develop awareness of the orthographic features of texts. This exploratory study was carried out with a group of first and second grade bilingual children in a school in Tucson, Arizona. Our research project focused on observing the process bilingual children followed when writing the story of Caperucita Roja to analyze the content of their texts in the different episodes of their stories and the use of punctuation around dialogue and narratives. The findings show that the majority of children were aware of the use of punctuation marks in their writing. We found a direct relation between punctuation and the use of dialogue (indirect speech) in children texts. Children used additional (syntactic and lexical) forms in their texts that demonstrate that they know the use of direct speech. Children's texts exhibited very little use of punctuation in their narratives; they only used period and capital letters.

Keywords : Children's biliteracy process; punctuation in children's texts; writing development in bilingual contexts.

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