Bilingual children's writing: Self-correction and revision of written narratives in Spanish and Nahuatl

The article reports on findings from a replication of a study of bilingual children's editing and correction strategies. The earlier study analyzed revisions that 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders made to their own compositions, written in Spanish. The present study applied the same procedure and assessment rubric to the first draft of compositions written in the other language students speak, Nahuatl. Subjects were all fluent speakers of both languages, from an indigenous community in Central Mexico. The discussion of the findings examines how the concept of a Common Underlying Proficiency [Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters] may apply to a situation of community-wide bilingualism that is characterized by wide sociolinguistic disparities between the language of schooling and an indigenous language spoken by both students and teachers. Specifically, how might the access to underlying abilities related to literacy learning be affected by these disparities?