Writing in young bilingual children: Review of research

The importance of writing to academic achievement has been well-documented. Substantial research has investigated writing among monolingual speakers, but less research has examined writing in bilingual students, particularly in early childhood. Understanding young bilingual children’s writing development and identifying instructional pedagogies that support their growth as writers, is imperative. To guide pedagogy and research, we conducted a review of the research on writing in young bilingual children. A search of databases for studies published between 2000 and 2017 yielded 35 peer-reviewed articles that met inclusion criteria. Results of a content analysis demonstrated that young bilingual children develop knowledge and understandings of print and a range of composing strategies that support bilingual and biliterate writing. Pedagogies most supportive of young bilingual students’ growth as writers were meaning-based, provided explicit instruction on concepts about print that were contextualized within authentic activities, and created curricular space for multimodal forms of literacy. Genre-based writing instruction, technology-mediated composing, and ESL-enhanced content area literacy instruction also were found to be supportive. The evidence indicated that instruction in the native language as well as dual language instruction supported biliteracy.