Bilingual students are underrepresented in gifted and talented (GT) programs, and language/literacy research on these students is scarce. This study examined academic language in expository writing of 65 GT students, including 32 bilinguals, in Grades 4–8. Outcomes at the word, phrase, sentence, and text levels were compared for bilinguals’ versus monolinguals’ English writing, and bilinguals’ English versus Spanish writing. In addition, two students’ texts were explored qualitatively. In English, bilinguals and monolinguals did not significantly differ on any measure. Bilinguals scored higher in English than Spanish on most traditional word- and sentence-level measures, were equal in lexical diversity, and varied at the phrase level. English and Spanish writing was similar in content and structure, suggesting transfer of text-level skills. The qualitative assessment highlighted diverse attempts at information condensing and author distance with varying success, again with similar outcomes at the text level.

中文翻译：

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双语天才学生的说明文写作：探索英语和西班牙语的学术语言特征

双语学生在天才和天才 (GT) 项目中的代表性不足，对这些学生的语言/识字研究很少。本研究检查了 4-8 年级 65 名 GT 学生（包括 32 名双语学生）在说明性写作中的学术语言。比较双语者与单语者的英语写作以及双语者的英语与西班牙语写作在单词、短语、句子和文本层面的结果。此外，对两名学生的课文进行了定性研究。在英语中，双语者和单语者在任何方面都没有显着差异。双语者在大多数传统单词和句子级别的测量中在英语中的得分高于西班牙语，在词汇多样性方面相同，并且在短语级别上有所不同。英语和西班牙语写作在内容和结构上相似，表明文本级技能的转移。