Text production in border contexts according to the urban/rural character of the school: a multiple case study

Abstract

This work presents the results of an investigation carried out in 2018 which objective was to analyze the differences in written productions between monolingual and bilingual children in different contexts. The universe of study includes 57 fourth graders from four schools in the northeast region of Uruguay. The techniques used included, on the one hand, standardized questionnaires for mothers and children to find out the linguistic varieties having been used by both, the sex of the child, the age of the mother and the household socioeconomic status. On the other hand, children’s written productions were analyzed through the dimensions considered by UMRE (Educational Outcomes Measurement Unit) in 1998. The texts reflected linguistic varieties different from Spanish in the text,. Besides, significant differences were found both between written productions made by both users and non-users of portuñol as well as regarding between border and non-border schools. Likewise, the dissimilarities as for between urban and rural schools were not substantial.