Research Symposium

BIO

Sofia Gasbarro is a second-year student originally from Chicago. She is studying International Affairs with a concentration in Spanish and Political Science with a minor in Anthropology. Sofia is interested in social and political affairs, and has volunteered with political and non-profit organizations for issues she is passionate about. She is pursuing a career where she will be able to specialize in international research regarding humanitarian matters. Sofia hopes that through this project she has been working on with Ms. Hines and her co-presenters, will promote further research on the topic of reading comprehension focused for multilingual students .She is an advocate for Florida adopting more intersectional curriculums that are representative of all its constituents, encouraging equity in the classroom.

An Analysis of Microstructure Features in Emergent Spanish-English Multilingual Learners

Abstract

This study’s purpose was to analyze the microstructure features of English Oral Narratives produced by Spanish-English Emergent Multilinguals in K-2. This was done through conducting narrative retells along with standardized assessments with 15 K-2 students to evaluate the microstructure features. The microstructure features coded for included MLU, Number of Different Words (NDW), Number of Total Words (NTW), Subordinate Index, Errors, and Morphological Diversity Index. When assessing the microstructure features of the oral narrative retell, it appears that students in kindergarten students produced less morphologically complex narratives while second grade students produced more lexically, morphologically, and syntactically diverse oral narrative retells as suggest the MLUw, NDW, and SI.

Keywords: Microstructure, multilingual, oral narratives, narrative discourse