Bilingual Literacies Interacting:

A longitudinal case study through primary schooling

Marina A. Aidman, University of Melbourne

The paper reports some findings in early biliteracy development, more precisely, it will focus on some aspects of a bilingual child’s' learning to write in her two languages.

With about 15 % of Australians speaking a language other than English in their homes (the figures are 26 % for Melbourne and about 25 % for Sydney - Kipp, Clyne, Pauwells, 1995), it is of increasing academic and social importance that this "linguistic wealth" be used for maximum benefits of both the individual and society (Cummins, 1991; Castles & Miller, 1993). In this context, research into literacy development in bilinguals becomes particularly important (Australian Language and Literacy Policy, 1995).

There have not been many studies into early bilingual writing development.

Past research into bilingualism primarily concentrated on oral language in bilinguals (Leopold, 1939-1949; Taeschner, 1983; Robinson, 1989; Dopke, 1992). Several studies provide some data on the development of the child's early bilingual reading (Saunders, 1988; D'Onofrio, 1989; Past & Past, 1978; Andersson, 1981), whereas literature on bilingual writing development in very young children is extremely scarce. Research into emergent writing focused primarily on monolinguals (e. g. Bissex, 1980; Collerson, 1983; Martin & Rothery, 1984; Christie, 1986; 1992; Kamler, 1990). In case of bilingual children, research looked at their ESL literacy acquisition as it occurred via mainstream schooling (Elliott, 1989; Reyes, 1991; Balliro & Nash, 1990; Cummins, 1991a, 1991b, 1992, 1996; Cumming, 1994).

What happens to a bilingual child's home language with the onset of schooling? Do children become literate in their mother tongue? And if it is so, how do home and English literacies co-exist? What are the patterns of bi-literacy development? What is the nature of relationship between the two literacies? The study reported here addressed some of these questions in a context of a longitudinal case study into emergent bilingual writing. Specifically, this paper will look at some effects of mother tongue uses on the child's choices of text types for writing in English.

The study is based on the additive model of bilingual development (Lambert, 1975) and the Common Underlying Proficiency Principle (Cummins, 1981, 1984, 1992, 1996). The additive model implies a situation "where both languages are supported academically and emotionally by both community and the society at large" (Malakoff & Hakuta, 1991, p.141). Such nurtured bilingualism is different from subtractive bilingualism in the nature of the context and direction of its development. In contrast to additive bilingualism, the subtractive bilingual situation occurs "when the mother tongue is a low-status minority language that is rapidly being replaced by the high-status majority... language" (Malakoff & Hakuta, 1991, p. 141).

Swain & Lapkin (1991) in their studies of English-French bilinguals have found that first language literacy and then biliteracy are a strong source of cognitive and curriculum advantage for bilingual children due to the transference of literacy skills from one language to the other. According to Cummins, there is "an underlying cognitive academic proficiency which is common across languages" (1984, p. 143), which makes possible the transfer of literacy-related skills (such as generalised skills in decoding and reading strategies) across the languages. Strategies for learning to read and write in one language can thus be utilised in learning literacy in the other language (Williams & Snipper, 1990, p.42).

On the basis of the additive model of bilingual development (Lambert, 1975) and the Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) principle (Cummins, 1981, 1984, 1991), it was hypothesised that the child developing literacy in her home language would not have an impeding effect on her English language competency, and would probably enhance it. I set out to analyse the child's writings in her two languages with an aim to find patterns of cross-language influence. The data which were longitudinally collected provide ample examples of the child's home languages uses as impacting upon her English writing. One way in which this cross-language influence manifested itself was the emergence in her English writing of some genres, or text types, (although embryonic) that were not explicitly taught at school but that had been explored via the mother tongue. This paper thus seeks to demonstrate some important influences of the child’s home language uses upon her choices of text types for writing in English.

The format of today's presentation allows me to focus on only some such examples. So, in this paper I will consider the child's successful learning to write stories in English as probably encouraged by her early engagement with story writing with the parent at home. I will then examine the child's early writing of embryonic causal explanations, and I will show that this genre was most likely stimulated by a comparable text type practised in the child's home language writing. And finally, I will look at the child's embryonic science reports, the structure of which was prompted by the parent.

1. Participants

The case study was conducted on a simultaneously bilingual female child named Anna, aged from 4:5 to 9:5 whose home language was Russian. Anna began mainstream schooling at age 4 in a fairly conservative Australian regional centre, which meant an almost exclusively monolingual environment. Thus, the child's language situation fits the category of minority home language without community support in Romaine’s (1989) taxonomy of bilingual contexts. I am stressing this to highlight that linguistic support from the family was coming predominantly in the minority language.

The researcher, who was the child’s mother, had the advantage of knowing the broader context of the child's cognitive and emotional development. It should be noted, for example, that Anna has never been a book worm or anything near that. When left to her own devices, she would much rather prefer to dress up and role play as well as work with paint, glue and scissors. However, she always willingly participated in the study, up to a point of offering her texts for analysis without being asked to. The interactions between the child and the parent usually occurred in relaxed home settings.

The texts for peer writing analysis were contributed by the child's classmates (N = 28, 16 girls and 12 boys, aged 5-9) enrolled in Grades Prep through to Grade 3 at the same school (a government mainstream primary school in an Australian regional centre). The texts were collected following classroom observations I conducted, on a weekly basis. In total over 300 texts were analysed.

2. Materials

The text types I have selected to discuss in this paper include narrative, explanation and science reports, and the child's texts are very simple, and often embryonic, examples of these. The rationale for choosing these genres were several. Firstly, these text types enjoy a "privileged" social status and are often expected by teachers in primary and secondary school (Christie & Rothery, 1995; Martin, 1985). Secondly, the prevalence of a "process writing" approach in primary classroom in many Victorian schools, has resulted in the lack of explicit instruction in these text types. But still more importantly, the genres were selected because there appeared to be some links between the child’s home literacy practices and the construction of these text types in English.

3. Text Analysis

Text in this study is analysed from a socio-semiotic perspective, as any stretch of language in which meaning is made (Halliday, 1985b). The text analysis utilises systemic functional grammar (Halliday, 1994) and is based on the genre and register theory (Martin, 1992).

Register is determined by the three features of the context of situation, such as field, tenor and mode (Halliday, 1985).

Field refers to "what is going on, where what is interpreted institutionally, in terms of some culturally recognised activity" (Martin, 1985, p. 23). The field is commonly referred to as "topic" of communication.

Tenor reflects the negotiation of social relationships among the participants (Martin, 1992). These relationships are mediated along the dimensions of status, contact and affect (Poynton, 1985).

Mode refers to the role of language in fulfilling social action (Martin, 1992). Thus, mode will refer to how the manner of communication is influencing the form of language organisation.

The significance of the social purpose of text for its overall structure has been long recognised in linguistics (e.g. Gregory, 1967; Benson & Greaves, 1973; Halliday, 1985b; Hasan, 1984). In this paper genres are referred to as text types having a particular overall structure or organisation and ordering of the parts, as well as specific grammatical features as determined by the social purpose of these texts (Gibbons, 1996).

1. Narrative writing

Narrative writing was scaffolded in Russian only (4:9-5:7), but subsequently appeared in the child's English texts without any explicit instruction and very little prior exposure.

There were several reasons for the parent’s attempts to engage the child in narrative writing: its high status in the western culture; the expectation of narrative writing in the school; and the fact that this text type appeared to be fitting into the child's ZPD at that particular age. The child had demonstrated interest in story book reading, which is typical of most children's literate behaviour during the preschool years. The narrative genre was also found to be among the very first independently attempted by "self-taught" young writers (Britton, 1983).

The overt social purpose of narratives in western culture is to entertain the reader. But by doing so, as Rothery and Christie (1995) would argue, narrative also creates a particularly valued subject position, "that of one who faces some challenge to the normal, otherwise harmonious nature of events, and either deals with it, or at least 'comes through it', to see a return to the usual state of being" (pp. 94-95). Narrative thus celebrates an individual's ability to stand up to challenges in life and overcome obstacles. The resolution of conflict and restoration of the social order in the end of the narrative is also very important.

There is no implication that English and Russian cultures are by any means identical. However, narrative in both has a recognisable and similar generic structure. While of course their realisations will be specific in either language, linguistic means employed to construct this text type are also comparable.

Amongst earlier linguists, the generic structure for narrative was proposed by Labov and Waletzky (1967), but the semantic description of the functions of stages was made by Rothery (1990) and Plum (1988). A mature narrative will have the following schematic structure:

(Abstract)^[Orientation^Complication^Evaluation^Resolution]n ^ (Coda),

where Orientation, Complication, Evaluation and Resolution are obligatory elements, and the sequence is recursive, while Abstract and Coda are optional; both Orientation and Evaluation may be realised either before or as part of Complication and Resolution respectively. Evaluation is found indispensable in mature narrative, for without it "such a narrative lacks significance; it has no point" (Labov & Waletzky, 1967, p. 33). Evaluation is also one of the elements of narrative structure that often lacks in primary students writing (Rothery & Christie, 1995). We therefore consider as evidence of some mastering of the genre the appearance over time of Evaluative element in the bilingual child's story writing.

Narrative writing in Russian

The development of Russian narrative writing from pre-school through Grade Prep was scaffolded in the familial context by the child's primary care-giver:

· from parent writing down to the child's dictation (with parent's modification of some of the child's grammar) and

the child illustrating the story (the child at this stage very keen on primarily telling the story and drawing)

· through the child's speech bubble writing

· to her full clause writing and gradually taking over the writing of whole clause complexes.

The activity was parent-introduced. The child appeared interested and would participate, but at first only as a joint parent-child activity. It took some time for the child to start initiating Russian story writing and sometimes make whole pages without involving the parent. Bearing in mind varying degrees of parental involvement, we shall analyse only those parts of the child's narratives that she produced independently. By independent production we understand the child's initiation of the writing activity and lack of interlocutors' stimulation immediately preceding and during the writing process.

The following stages were identified in the child's mastering Russian story writing (original Russian texts will be reproduced below and elsewhere along with their translations into English, in brackets):

· Participation in oral joint text construction and drawing illustrations

· Independent writing of speech bubbles:

· Clause writing (clauses chosen do not have to have a verb in Russian):

A clause in Russian does not have to have a verb. Its predicative function may be realised by the zero form of the verb áü1òü (=be) or by other means as well.

The first clause in the last example is the so-called naming clause, which typically consists of a nominal group realising the subject only. Into English it may be translated as It is the ball at Aniechka's Palace. This type of clause relates to a situation when it is presented as occurring simultaneously with the events in the surrounding context.

As to the second clause, the verb áü1òü (=be) in Russian is commonly omitted in the present tense. When similar experience needs to be reported as past or future, there will appear the verb áü1òü(=be) in its past or future form. Thus although the sentence might look elliptical in the translation, it is appropriately constructed in accordance with the Russian grammar.

· Verbs used in the present tense:

· Appearance of past tense verbs to relate events in the past:

The use of past tense choices is one of the typical linguistic features of narrative. Once the child started using this form for relating imaginative experience, she continued to do so consistently through narrative writing in Russian. This tense form was subsequently adopted for English narrative where the child started to use past tense almost completely "skipping" the present tense stage.

· Building a sequence of events in the past. Use of conjunctive adjuncts for sequencing:

Sequencing events temporarily is an important characteristic feature of narrative. This also, once mastered in the child's home language, was later employed in her English writing.

· Use of conjunctions to build logical connections between the clauses:

Narrative typically makes use of a variety of conjunctions to realise logical connections between clauses. The child's learning to do so (for example, her use of the additive è (=and) and contrastive a conjunctions (=and; but), and also the conjunction ÷òî (=that) to build projection) appeared to promote her facility in building explicit logical connections in story writing in English.

· Use of verbal and mental Processes to build projection

Learning to build projections is demonstrative of the child's growing cognitive development (Painter, 1993; 1996). Used in writing, projections show her increasing control of written mode, as well as of narrative writing where projections play an important part in relating how the principal characters feel during various stages of the story. Clauses projected by mental processes of cognition are often used to build the Evaluation element, as in the following example:

The projecting word in the above example is a verbal form in Russian (past participle).

In another instance the child uses a verbal process to project narration:

There is also an example of the child’s using a mental process of cognition to build projection:

· Learning elements of the generic structure of narrative

I will illustrate by reproducing one element (Resolution) of a narrative which was initiated and completed without the parent even knowing of the child's writing (collected afterwards):

This clause complex is finishing off the child's narrative. Written independently, it demonstrates the child's awareness of the way narrative is expected to conclude: after the disruption of events, life has to return to a state of usuality, normally meaning a successful outcome for the characters (Rothery & Christie, 1995). This return to usuality and stability at the end of a "story" was subsequently made invariably explicit in the child's English narratives.

English narrative

At the beginning of Year One the child's interest in writing stories in Russian gave way to consistent story writing in English. It appears worth reiterating that there was no scaffolding for English narrative.

The context for construction of this text type was usually in-class "free writing time" where the child chose exclusively narrative genre for her story writing. At the same time, the majority of her grade peers chose other / simpler text types, such as observation or recount basing on personal experience, for the same task - as would be expected at this age. Of those students who attempted to relate imagined experience, many had difficulty meeting the generic requirements of narrative. One of the factors possibly responsible for Anna’s choosing to write narrative and her comparative advancement in it appears to be her experience in Russian story writing, including the scaffolding she received in it.

Here are a few texts to exemplify the child's peer story writing. Text 1 was written by a Year 3 student considered advanced by the teacher (here and elsewhere we choose to label and underline elements of generic structure for the purposes of further discussion):

There are inconsistencies in relating past events, particularly in Resolution where the sequence is hard to follow. There are also inconsistencies with handling Reference (in bold) in the Resolution stage, where personal pronoun his, he refers to the dog and the boy, thus making it difficult to distinguish between the participants.

While the story started off as a recount of personal experience, it appears the child attempted to introduce some elements of imaginative experience with regards to her brother (whose height is of course exaggerated).

Overall, the text is not very successfully structured; the way the clauses are sequenced hinders comprehension. Logical connections between clauses are sometimes unclear (for example, it is hard to see the relationship between the following clauses connected hypotactically:

Here is another text (2) written by a Year two student whose achievement in English writing was considered as "average":

While the text definitely relates imaginative rather than personal experience (there is obviously influence of the TV cartoon serial on the choice of topic), the schematic structure of the text is confused. The Orientation is weak, the principal character does not get any introduction (presumed Reference). The second clause gets the reader into the Description of Events, culminating in the Complication in clause three. While there is a series of Complications, there do not appear to be satisfactory Resolutions. The Evaluative Comment is very inexplicit. There is also lack of consistency in the use of tense (shift from past to present to past cannot be justified here) as well as Reference, which causes the text to lack clear cohesion.

Text 3 is another piece produced by an "average" Year two student:

While the first six clauses (Orientation) creates an impression that we are dealing with a piece of narrative, the subsequent text upsets such expectations. There is hardly any generic structure to this text, the events seem so unrelated. There is no sequencing of events, constant shift between the tenses (past to present then again past and present and finally again past verbal forms are represented in bold) makes the text hard to follow. The text is observational, with neither the Description of Events leading to a Complication (as in narrative), nor properly sequenced temporarily (as in recount). There is hardly any logically justifiable Complication. Overall, the text demonstrates the students yet lacking control of the written mode of language and, particularly, the generic structure of narrative.

We shall now look at one of the child's English "stories" (written late in Year Two) to see how she manages some conventions of the narrative genre. In the text to follow, we shall represent in bold the marked topical Themes (Halliday, 1994) which serve to foreground the sequencing of the events.

The story has been selected for the purposes of comparison as typical of the child's writing during the "free writing time".

Compared to the child's previously constructed narratives as well as to many of her grade peers', Text 4 evidences some development in the child's handling of the genre. Thus, the child (1) builds explicit Evaluative elements and (2) constructs several Complications each followed by a successful Resolution.

The Evaluation is realised in mental and behavioural processes. Painter (1996) observes that use of mental processes in the child's spoken language is a later development compared to the other process categories. Their appearance reflect the child's ability to construct second order presentation of reality. The analysis of the bilingual's writings appears suggestive of a similar trend as applying to written language development. On the interpersonal plane, projections, particularly those constructed through the use of mental processes of cognition, serve to express modality:

In the above example, the mental process thought projecting the protagonist’s thoughts functions as the grammatical metaphor for modal operators, meaning, for example might (have). With this modal function foregrounded, the mental processes of cognition which project phenomena (ideas) may help build the evaluative aspect of the narration.

In the clause Kirima [[really surprised]] asked the girl (Resolution 3), the embedded clause really surprised which consists of an emotionally charged Attribute surprised and intensifier really is used for the purpose of relating the character's inner turbulences. There is another evaluative epithet projected by a character's locution: terrible (wizard).

The behavioural process screamed is used in Complication 3 to show the readers the significance of the moment by accentuating the protagonist’s state of consciousness as demonstrated in her behaviour:

Sequencing of events in Text 4 is foregrounded through marked topical Themes realised in Circumstance of time and hypotactically connected clauses (represented in bold).

In Text 4, verbal and mental processes are used to construct projections of the participants’ thoughts (as shown above) and dialogue. There is a variety of verbal processes to project locutions. Dialogue which is a regular feature of mature narrative is introduced by such verbal processes as said, replied, asked. The child’s peers, when constructing projections of locutions, typically only use one verbal process said.

And, finally, in Text 4 there are some fairly elaborate (for the child of age 7:7) nominal groups realising participants:

We have thus demonstrated that the bilingual child's story appears to have some advantageous aspects with respect to handling the generic structure and linguistic features of narrative compared to those written by many of her grade peers. One of the factors responsible for such advancement may be her early engaging with story writing in the home language.

2. Learning to write causal explanations

Of the factual genres which students may expect to engage with in primary school, the explanation genre has a special standing. It is the explanation genre that is concerned primarily with providing a justification of opinion(s) put across (Martin, 1985):

judgements involve the writer interpreting the world, not simply observing it. (p.11)

The following piece written by a Year 3 student is an example of a judgement text type (Martin, 1989):

There are at least two important things about this text. Firstly, it is general, in that the participants are general. The writer is asserting an opinion about friends in general and addresses the reader as you meaning "anyone who reads this texts". According to Martin, (1985), this text

explains why friends are important, not why the writer likes one particular friend. (p. 11)

Secondly, this text focuses on the judgment made by the writer that friends are important, thus trying to interpret some facts of life. To say that something is important would mean to adopt an attitude towards it. Being able to explicitly state in writing one’s opinion and provide justification of it is an important step in learning to control the written mode of language. In young children’s writing, justifying attitudes appears to be the most common use of judgemental texts. Judgements involving generalisations are particularly significant in young students’ writing, for they demonstrate their having learned something important about the principal differences between speech and writing. Generalisations reveal children’s understanding that writing tends to be impersonal and that whenever opinions are expressed they need to be explicitly justified:

In general, writing discourages the overt expression of feelings and attitudes. And when they are expressed they must be explicitly justified. (Martin, 1985, p. 12)

Explicit teaching of judgmental writing was not available in our child’s classroom. Our analysis of peer writing in Years Prep. and One, for example, revealed that judgmental writing on factual issues was indeed a very rare feature. In fact, we did not find a single factual judgment in the writing of the child’s peers (28 students) over the first two years of schooling. We are not talking here about texts of personal experience, such as "I like popcorn because it’s yummy", but about factual writing that would involve some generalisation as well as the writer taking a distinctly impersonal standing. We shall now consider the schematic structure of Anna's English explanations in order to compare it later to that of her explanations earlier practised in Russian.

Structurally, the texts comprise a distinct Statement of opinion which is followed by a statement about the Reasons to support such opinion. Logical relations are important in constructing a judgement. Such causal relations are constructed explicitly in Texts 6 and 7, by means of the causative conjunction because, and implicitly in Text 5. The tense choice is the simple present tense, so as to relate the timeless nature of the opinion and reasons put forward to justify it.

It appears significant that factual judgments have not been found in the peers’ texts over the comparable period of schooling (Years Prep.-1). There are at least two plausible explanation of the emergence of the genre in the bilingual child’s English writing.

It may be suggested that the choice of the schematic structure of the child’s causal explanatory texts was influenced by patterns of spoken communication in the child’s family where questions requiring reasoning are a feature of every day talk. This would be in line with Cloran’s (1996) analysis of mother-child interactions in HAP (High Autonomy Professionals) families (Hasan, 1991) where the parents are usually tertiary educated. There is however some important difference between the child's familial language input and that in the families observed by Cloran and Hasan, for in Anna’s family, all child-parent communication typically occurred in the home language. The child’s HAP background did not appear to be a sufficient explanation for her choosing the text type not used by her peers, as about two thirds of the child’s class peers were also coming from HAP families. That made us look for some additional factors that could have influenced the child’s choices for explanatory writing. The analysis of her early writing in her home language suggested that the child’s initiation of factual why-explanations had been rehearsed in the child-parent written dialogue employed earlier in her literacy learning (the child-parent written dialogue in Russian is discussed in Aidman, 1994). We shall now demonstrate why the child's exploring explanatory writing in the majority language at an early age 6:1 can be considered to be indirectly influenced by the scaffolding which she had for Russian explanatory, in the mode of child-parent written dialogue.

It was usually the parent's why-questions (sometimes posed orally, but more typically offered to the child in writing) that scaffolded the child's causal explanatory writing. The importance of stimulating the child's cognitive development by asking questions that require reasoning to reply has been stated due to the research (for example, Torr, 1993). The why- questions, that is those demanding explanation of reasons or causes, also appeared to be fitting into the child's ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development - Vygotsky, 1978) during her early years of writing. Children of preschool and early school age are characteristically found to be asking numerous why-questions, and they are therefore usually not surprised to be facing similar questions themselves.

Figures 1-2 below show examples of child-parent dialogue and their translations into English (statements of opinion and reasons for them are in bold; the explicit conjunctive connections between the judgement and the reason for it are underlined).

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

As was earlier mentioned, the analysis of peers’ texts revealed no evidence of judgmental factual texts in the entire class of 28. According to studies of Martin and Rothery (1981, 1984) now some years old, the majority of this age group show no evidence of writing of such causal explanations. The evidence of this study would appear to suggest that the trend identified by Martin and Rothery still applies.

The fact that the child was the only one who chose this genre in English indicates a connection between parental scaffolding in the mother tongue and its transfer to majority language. In other words, the child’s learning to construct causal explanation in writing in one language can be an important factor which stimulated her to construct this text type in the other.

3. Learning to write natural science reports

I will now show the effects of parental participation in the process of the child's learning to construct science report texts. It will be argued that a shared language of child-parent communication is essential for such parental knowledge and involvement to occur.

The Russian language, this time in its spoken mode, was used to scaffold the child's English natural science report writing. Report writing on living species has been examined in fine detail in a series of books for teaching report writing written by Christie et al. (1990a, 1990b).

Structurally the child’s embryonic reports consist of a Classificatory Statement element (underlined) followed by a Description of animals' appearance and their living habits.

As Texts 8-11 were written in the home, it appears possible to examine the role of parental participation in report text construction. As she was involved in writing the above texts, Anna was reading the clauses to the parent. The child appeared to be actively negotiating with parents: she listened to what they would say, and it seems that some of the discussion influenced her texts. We shall now look at the context of the report pieces construction in the home in more detail, as this will help to highlight both the importance of the general atmosphere in the family which is supportive of literacy activities, and also the importance of the care-givers’ active involvement with the child’s language uses.

As has been mentioned earlier in the section, all of the child’s English factual writing in the home, including her report texts, was self-initiated. Anna wrote her reports on a weekend, with an intention to show to them off to the teacher and peers after the weekend. The texts were written on separate sheets of paper, to be then arranged in a large poster, which the child eventually did.

Anna began with a text about birds (Text 12 is reproduced in the Appendices) which she completed independently. While the child was saying the clauses out loud as she was writing them down, she would not however invite the parent (who was working in an adjacent area) for any comment. Before embarking on another text which she declared would be about dogs, Anna chose to read the "bird" text to the parent. Up to that stage, the parent’s participation in the report text construction consisted in sympathetic and appreciative noises only. However, before the child began writing her text about dogs, the mother decided to speak and explicitly focus Anna’s attention on the way that texts about living species are typically structured (it should be noted that at that moment mother was in the shower). Here is a translated version of the mother’s spoken advice (which originally occurred in Russian):

The child obviously engaged in writing about dogs (Text 8). A few minutes later, as she declared that she was going to write about lions (Text 9), the mother prompted again (translated from Russian):

The child wrote Text 10 (about cats) independently. Then she announced her next choice of animal: rats (Text 11). The mother was still in the shower, but volunteered some classificatory information. While the parent was confident in the Russian language choice of vocabulary, she was less so about the corresponding English term. At this point of text construction, the child’s father was called upon to check the terminology:

The above instances of parental involvement show that the parent did in fact have some influence on the language choices for the child’s report pieces (for example, the mother's mentioning the fact of some animals being mammals and belonging to particular families and orders in the taxonomy of the living species). The parent thus contributed to building the field relevant for report writing, by providing some classificatory terms and subsequently translating those into English. The parent also talked about schematic structure of the type of writing conceived by the child (more likely report-like texts), by pointing out that more general information should be presented first, with more specific to follow.

Obviously, if Anna were to construct the texts in the absence of the parent, the texts would have lacked some classificatory elements as well as technical vocabulary. Basing our appraisal of the child's ability to create factual texts on Vygotsky's (1978) notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD - Vygotsky, 1978), we can conclude that the rapidity with which the child caught on the parent's comments and implemented some ideas into her writing, indicates that Anna was ready for learning those aspects, and the learning process did take place. In the very process of constructing those texts, Anna moved from her actual level of competence a step further, into the ZPD, actually making the reality what had been only a potential.

As earlier mentioned, the oral interaction between the parent and child was effected in Russian, with occasional translations of certain terms by the mother into English. The written text, on the contrary, was constructed by the child exclusively in English. This demonstrates at least two things: one is the facility of the child's movement between the two languages, and the other is the child's obviously strong differentiation between the use of the languages depending on the purpose ( the intended audience included in this notion).

Texts 8-11 were produced shortly after the parent's contribution to text construction (albeit oral and in a language different from that of writing). There was still a question of how much of the information received in child-parent negotiation of texts was internalised by the child. It was therefore of particular interest to see what she was subsequently able to write independently. Some evidence of the child's having internalised the knowledge made available to her during the child-parent interaction when she was writing her series of science reports at home was collected two weeks later. Text 13 was written in the classroom. The initiation came from the teacher who required that students write about any tourist attraction in Victoria. The topic and text type were chosen by the child. While the teacher appeared to encourage her students to read books about animals, there was no explicit teaching on how to write about living species. During the writing session, the teacher made a point that she did not want the children to look into books, not when writing anyway. She conceded that they could look in a book, but make sure to close it and to "use their own language" when writing. The child’s text appears to have a report-like component built in its schematic text structure. The classificatory element is underlined:

As the analysis of the Text 12 generic structure shows, the animal of the child’s choice is classified and described as would be an expectation of a science report text type.

It is significant that the Classificatory Statement element of the generic structure is not found in the peers’ writing about animals in Year 2 and 3. The use of technical language (e.g., "warm-blooded mammals", "marsupial" is not a feature of other students’ texts either. It is therefore suggested that Anna’s consistent attempt to open her texts on living species with a Classificatory Statement reflects the impact which the parental scaffolding had apparently on her language learning.

The fact that the parental participation in science text construction largely happened in the child’s home language points to a possibility to use scaffolding in the mother tongue directly for the majority language writing.

While more case studies would be required in order to warrant generalisations, there are several conclusions that can be drawn from our study.

A bilingual's literacies can coexist, without any detrimental impact upon the majority language literacy. In fact, the bilingual child's ability to use her home language appears to have had a stimulating effect on her English literacy learning. Thus, the emergence of some text types in her English writing seems to be related to the child's experiences with such genres largely mediated by her family language.

It can be argued of course that in our case, the child's above average English performance can by accounted for by some factors other than her bilingual literacy development, such as the parental educational background and their interest in the child's language development. It should be noted however that the parents' participation in the child's language experiences was enabled due to primarily the child's fluency in her mother tongue. Given the very unfocused and inexplicit nature of the child's classroom literacy experiences, the child's familial language uses seem to be significantly responsible for her English language success.

References

Christie, F., Gray, B., Martin, J., Macken M., Gray, P. and Rothery, J. 1990a. Exploring Reports. Sydney: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

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