Writing motivational incentives of middle school emergent bilingual students

The purpose of this study was to compare the motivational incentives for writing of middle school emergent bilingual students with their peers whose first language was English. The study included 285 emergent bilingual students (146 girls, 139 boys) who were matched with 285 native English speakers (NE) on race, gender, and grade. The emergent bilingual students included two groups: students receiving English language services (EL) and students who had been reclassified as English proficient (REP). All students completed the school district’s standardized informative writing test and a survey assessing the following writing motivational incentives: curiosity, involvement, social recognition, grades, competition, emotional regulation, and relief from boredom. While the writing motivational incentives of EL and REP students were similar, one or both of these groups of emergent bilingual students had statistically higher scores than NE students on all but one of the motivational incentives for writing. NE students were more motivated than emergent bilingual students to write for better grades, and they also had higher scores on the standardized writing test. REP students scored higher on this test than EL students. While motivational incentives for writing predicted NE students’ writing performance, this was not the case for EL and REP students.