Research Symposium

BIO

My name is Jennifer Godwin. I'm majoring in Communication Science and Disorders with a minor in Child Development. I am also pursuing certificates in Interdepartmental Developmental Disabilities and Multilingual Service Delivery. In the future, I want to be a pediatric speech pathologist. I hope to work in an urban setting to have a diverse clientele, working to help alleviate disparities that minority children may face within my profession.

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: Multilingual learners, microstructure features, Spanish-English