Sorting Errors: Transfer, Development, or Disability?
Mr. Okafor teaches a mixed fourth-grade class that includes Lucía, a Spanish-speaking EL at the early-intermediate level. In a writing sample Lucía produces "He runned to the store," "She have two cat," and "I no like the rain." In oral reading she says "sink" for think, "berry" for very, and drops final -s from plural nouns. Mr. Okafor has 20 minutes of small-group time per day, and his district pacing guide says past-tense verbs are the next unit. He is unsure whether to spend the time on pronunciation, on the grammatical errors, or on the pacing-guide unit, and whether any of these errors suggest a language difference rather than a delay.
1. Classify Lucía's errors by likely source - L1 transfer, developmental/interlanguage, or both - and explain what each pattern reveals about her language system. Then recommend how Mr. Okafor should use the 20 minutes, with justification.
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1. Sort the errors before deciding anything.
- "Runned" - developmental overgeneralization. Spanish has no -ed morpheme to transfer, so this is evidence that Lucía has extracted the regular past-tense rule and is overapplying it. That is progress, not regression.
- "I no like" - likely L1 transfer: Spanish negation places no before the verb.
- "She have" - subject–verb agreement, a classic developmental sequence in English, not a Spanish pattern.
- "Two cat" - could be either: Spanish marks plurals with -s, but many Latin American varieties weaken or drop final /s/, so dialect-influenced transfer is plausible.
- "Sink" for think - transfer; seseo varieties realize the sound as /s/.
- "Berry" for very - transfer; Spanish /b/ and /v/ are not contrasted.
2. Weigh communicative impact and teachability. The grammatical errors block meaning more than the pronunciation ones. /θ/ and /v/ carry low functional load in English and are late-acquired; drilling them for 20 minutes would consume time with little payoff. The past tense is already emerging and is the district unit, so the pacing guide and Lucía's interlanguage are aligned.
3. Recommended plan. Use the 20 minutes for the past-tense unit - regular forms, then high-frequency irregulars (went, ate, saw) - with structured oral practice and corrective recasts. Treat /θ/ and /v/ incidentally through recasting during that talk, not as a separate unit. This puts the time where the learner is developmentally ready and where the payoff for comprehensibility is greatest.
2. A colleague suggests referring Lucía for a special education evaluation because "she keeps making the same mistakes." How should Mr. Okafor respond?
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Reframe what the errors are. These are systematic and rule-governed, which is the signature of normal second-language development. "Runned" shows a rule being applied, not a failure to learn. Persistent-looking errors are expected in interlanguage and can fossilize temporarily without indicating disability.
Apply the exclusionary question. A disability determination requires evidence of a problem that is not explained by limited English proficiency or by lack of adequate instruction. Nothing in the sample meets that bar. Errors consistent with L1 transfer plus developmental sequences point to language difference.
Check the conditions before agreeing to a referral. Has Lucía had consistent, high-quality EL instruction? Is she progressing over time, even slowly? Do the same difficulties appear in Spanish literacy? Does she struggle in non-language domains (math computation, attention, memory)? Only a pattern that persists across both languages and across settings, despite good instruction, justifies a referral.
Suggested response to the colleague. Agree to monitor rather than refer: collect monthly writing samples, compare with an English-only peer's developmental pattern, and document the instruction provided. If progress stalls across languages and settings after documented intervention, then referral is appropriate and should include native-language data. Waiting without collecting data is as wrong as referring reflexively.