Interview & Group Summary of Interview

What is your name?
Sergio

And your age?
What age?

How old are you?
Six

What do you like to play?
Uh

You can talk into this box, it’s okay. What do you like to play?
Computers

Computers? That’s fun, do you have a favorite game on the computer?
Yes, I mean, yes

Okay, do you have brothers or sisters?
No, I only have me and my family

You and your family and you’ve got your mommy and daddy?
Yes, only my mommy and daddy, not everybody

Where are you from, Sergio?
What?

Where are you from, what country?
What is a country?

Um, pais?
You mean, pais?

Yes, what country, uh, Spain?
Spain?

Do you know where you are from? Where’s your family from?
My um, they belong to a work

Oh, okay, they go to work? Good. And what grade are you in, Sergio?
Um, first grade.

Oh, first grade and do you like your teacher?
Why do I go to to one hundred grade?

Why do you do to one hundred grade? Yea, well you’ll probably go to 12th grade and then college.
Why do I get to 12?

Yea, it’s going to be a long time. Do you like your teacher?
Yes, when do I go to 12 grader?

What if you’re a 12th grader, uh huh.
Then school’s finished?

Yes, and then you’ll probably go to college, if you want. Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
Where’s college?

I don’t know, you’ll probably pick a college one day.
Okay.

I’m going to ask you to read a page from a book. It’s called Sleepy Dog.
Sleepy dog, okay.

Can you read in English?
No, I can’t read it exactly.

Okay, do you want to try a word or two for me?
No

What’s the dog doing?
Sleeping

Sleeping? Okay. Are you okay with reading any of these words?
Uh, yes.

Oh, can you tell me one word that’s on this page?
No, I’m too tired

You’re tired, you had a long day at school?
Yea.

Okay, I’ll read a couple of pages to you
I’m tired of school

Really, has it been a long year?
Uh

How about I read two pages to you. Head on pillow, nose under covers.
How many days I’m in second grader?

Oh, you’ll be in second grade next year, in August. Okay? How many years have you lived in the United States?
In August?
Uh huh.
In August I’ll be in there?

In August you’ll be in second grade.
And which one will I be 12th grader?
Oh, many years from now.
Um.

Probably 10 more years. Hey Sergio, do you think you could write a page for me, like a sentence? Can you write “cat”?
Cat?

Uh huh.

Maybe how many January…

Oh, you know how to write the days of the month? I mean, the months of the year?
Uh, yes

Okay, great. Show me what you can write.

Group Summary

Our group interviewed a boy named Sergio, who is from Peru. Sergio is six years old and has lived in the U.S. for all his life. As a group, we have come to the following conclusions, based on our observations of his performance.
Sergio has good speaking and writing skills, however his listening and reading skills need a little work. We feel that he is at the intermediate level and has a subconscious knowledge of his L1. From the transcription of the interview, you can see that his performance is good, however his competence is low. His L1 BICS is good for his stage, but his CALP is quite questionable. We had a hard time determining his L1 CALP. As for his L2, he has no L2 BICS or CALP at this moment in time.
From Sergio’s writing sample, you can see that he is able to use letters to make words, however, with a few mistakes. Although he was able to write out the months of the year, he still received some instruction. Some of the mistakes noticed were when he spelled “May” as “Mey”. We determine this to be a problem with phonology. Also, we noticed that Sergio wrote his “J’s” backwards, but none of the other letters were written incorrectly. He also capitalized some of the months, but left “December” with a lowercase letter.
As far as syntax is concerned, we were unable to view his sentence structure because we were unable to attain a sample sentence from him. However, we are quite sure that at this moment in time, he would most likely be unable to form a sentence without help or instruction.
Overall, we believe that Sergio is past level 1, bordering on level 2, intermediate. He understands words that are spoken and responds, however, he needs improvement in other areas such as listening and reading.
In comparison to our subject Rosa in Phase 1 & 2, Sergio's vocabulary as far as speaking and writing in his L1 is about the same. Even though Sergio has lived in the U.S. all of his life, his parents still speak only their native language. Therefore, Sergio mixes up the L1 and L2 languages just like Rosa when speaking and writing. However, Sergio's reading and listening skills in his L1 and L2 are more developed than Rosa. This is because he has been exposed to English for a longer time.
As for Sergio's sentences, we were unable to get a writing sample but we can presume that he would need assistance to form complete sentences, just like Rosa would.
Additionally, like Rosa at this point he would probably use a combination of his L1 and L2 in his sentences. Sergio's negation stage is about the same as Rosa's. They both don't use the word "no" in front of words in their L1 or their L2. Both children's pronunciation is improving and at this point. However, for both of them, their L1 pronunciation is fading when they speak to their Spanish peers. The L2 pronunciation is developing fine for both of them.