Thinking about thinking

It's called "metacognition"... thinking about one's thought processes.
Then add writing.
Thinking about one's writerly thought processes.
Now add bilingual.
Thinking about one's bilingual writerly thought processes.
That's it!!!

I'm not very skilled at translating, unless it's just to communicate the gist of someone's ideas expressed in one language so that a person who doesn't understand that person's ideas gets the main idea mas o menos. I do speak Spanish as a second language fairly fluently; and given enough time and access to a dictionary (or 2) along with a book of verb conjugations, I can write in Spanish so that my ideas are understood more or less. But write an essay, short story, poem, a NOVEL in my second language? No, not me. But that is what I will ask my fourth and fifth grade Writing Project participants to do next month.

I've been doing a lot of metacognitive thinking about bilingual writing processes as I plan the mini lessons for the project. Over the past fifteen years, mas o menos, of teaching writing to bilingual students, I've developed my own system for how to write in Spanish. Mostly I use this in my written communication to the parents of my students, like newsletters or invitations to a class celebration.

1. I make a mental plan in English of the main ideas I want to get across.
2. I start writing the message in Spanish, consulting several reference books: an English/Spanish translation dictionary, a Spanish dictionary which includes definitions and example sentences, and a well-worn copy of 501 Spanish Verbs.
3. Then I write the same message in English, based on the original mental plan but NOT a translation of the Spanish version.
4. Next I compare the English version and the Spanish version looking for and adjusting critical differences in the message's meaning.

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5. Finally I look for grammar and spelling errors in the Spanish version... and then sometimes, I send it to my niece, Leah - who is a translator by profession, to have her double check it. Or my backup plan for this double check, is an online translation site.

I've found that if I start by writing the message in English and then translate every word, the sentence construction doesn't come out sounding natural in Spanish. In other words I plan in English, then consciously switch mentally to Spanish to write the first draft. Then switch to English thinking/writing for the second draft. At the end, I open both language drawers in my brain for the final revision/edited version of the writing piece.

Maybe someday, I'll evolve into a bilingual writer who can go from first draft to final copy in Spanish (my second language), without opening my native language (English) drawer hardly at all. In fact that seems to be what we expect native Spanish speaking children to do on the first day of school the year they begin English-only instruction - use ONLY their second language drawer. Some succeed fairly well, probably making use of the native language drawer in their brain as needed without even realizing it. Others, like the students who have been invited to join the Writing Project, need some coaching on using both drawers for a while.

My hope for the Writing Project is that at some point, sooner than later, in the next few years of these fourth and fifth grade bilingual students' school careers, they will arrive at a point in which they can open either drawer and just start writing without using the long process I described above (steps 1-5). In the meantime, we are going to do a lot of thinking about one's bilingual writerly thought processes together.