The worlds children's words build
ISSN: 1130-0531, 1988-2548
Year of publication: 2007
Issue: 19
Pages: 155-172
Type: Article
More publications in: Didáctica. Lengua y literatura
Abstract
In this paper, framed in a research project carried out at the University of La Rioja, Spain, we have analyzed a corpus of 271 compositions written by the same number of students of about 10 years of age. Our goal has been to determine what words children of the fourth year in elementary school use when writing in a second language, and specifically to detect any disparities between male and female performance. The analysis of our corpus has contributed data which allows us to draw conclusions of crucial importance for ESL teaching and learning. Differences are slight but palpable, and, contrary to the hypothesis of Jespersen and others, females...