Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción.Facultad de Educación.

Pedagogía en Educación Media en Inglés.

Language Learner Profile

Iris Roa.

English learning and acquisition.

Juan Castro.

María Lagos.

Concepción, 19th June 2014.

Introduction

Learning a second language has different difficulties during the acquisition

process. Students` performance could vary depending on their abilities and

dedication. The first stage of this process is the most difficult for them because

beginners do not have the necessary tools to have an efficient level of proficiency

in language. The objective of this work is to analyze a beginner`s speaking

productive skill through the analysis of some interview answers. The focus will be

on providing an evaluation about grammar and phonetics mistakes by means of

examination of the learner performance displayed in his answers.

Background:

Student`s background

The learner`s name is Leonardo Ascensio. He is 19 years old and lives in

Talcahuano with his parents. Leonardo is a first year student of English pedagogy

at Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción. He has acquired his

knowledge in L2 (second language) mostly at school and “Comercial profesor

Sergio Moraga Arcil” high school. It is noteworthy that under the learner`s point of

view he did not receive so many tools to develop the English competences. He

described the teaching process that he received as “poor”. However, this situation

did not affect his intentions of being an English teacher.

English studies

Leonardo started his English studies when he was in 5° grade at “Centinela sur”

school. There, he received the basic base in L2. But he never had an English

class in the English language. All of his classes were in Spanish so the L2

acquisition was inadequate because he never was exposed to the language. In

high school he learned English in the same conditions, since his classes were also

in Spanish. He had English classes from the first year and in third year he had the

advantage of having two kind of English classes. “Sergio Moraga Arcil high school”

provides student with common English and also with technical English. The last

one is to prepare students to use l2 in the professional area. This is because

learners are prepared to work in companies in administrative departments.

Leonardo added that even though he had 5 hours of English at the week they were

in Spanish and with a low level of proficiency.

Testing:

Taped Interview

T: Interviewer

F: Interviewee

1. T: How did you learn English?

2. F: Errr mmm at the school, listen to music and see movie.

3. T: How often do you study?

4. F: Mmmm Only one in the week.

5. T: Which skill is more difficult for you?

6. F: Difficult is … for me listening, listening and speaking because emm the

7. people mmm speaking very fastest.

8. T: Which strategies do you use to study?

9. F: I make it summarize with c-map and memorize and…

10.T: Are you regret to choose this major?

11.F: No, no because I like English.

12.T: Would you like to study abroad?

13.F: Eh yes because I can learn more and know new space and new country.

14.T: Do you think that your high school gave you a good base in English?

15.F: No because the class was in the Spanish.

Phonetic transcription:

At the school, listen to music and see movie. Only one in the week. Difficult is for

me listening, listening and speaking because the people speaking very fastest. I

make it summarize with c-map and memorize and.

/ ʌt ðə skuːl ˈlɪsn tə ˈmjuːzɪk and siː ˈmuːvɪ. ˈonlɪ wʌn ɪn ðə wiːk. ˈdɪfɪkəlt ɪz fɒr miː

ˈlɪsnɪnk, ˈlɪsnɪŋ and ˈspiːkɪŋ bɪˈkɒz ðə ˈpiːpɒl ˈspiːkɪŋ ˈverɪ ˈfɑːstes ˈaɪ ˈmeɪk ɪt

ˈsʌməraɪz wɪð se-map and ˈmemɒraɪz and/

Analysis:

General analysis:

It can be appreciate that the interviewee has a significant deficient in grammar. He

has problems with the uses of tenses, pluralisation, omission of subject, order of

constituents and the lack of connectors are clearly identified. Due to his low level of

proficiency, his answers were very slight. There were significant syntactical

problems shown among other aspects with the misuse of tenses. Leonardo

answered all the questions in present simple tense, even those questions in which

we asked for aspects related to the past.

Furthermore, there were phonetic problems. Pronunciation is one of the most

difficult issues for learners when they are acquiring a new language. In Leonardo’s

case the influence of Spanish affected the pronunciation of final sounds. He

omitted the sound /s/ in all the plural forms.

Moreover, as he had mentioned, his instruction in English was not very good, that

is why it is hard for him being aware of his mistakes and correct himself because

the knowledge that he has is not enough.

.

Phonetics and phonology analysis:

Word: fastest (line 7).

Leonardo said: /fɑːstes/

He should say: /fɑːstɪst/.

Here it was a writing interference; Leonardo pronounced the word in a similar way

of its written form. In addition he omitted the final sound /t/. Usually, there are

problems related to pronunciation due to L2 learners get confuse with the written

word and the pronunciation of those words.

Words: only (line 4) no (line 11)

Leonardo said: /ɒnlɪ/ /nɒ/

He should say: /əʊnlɪ/ /nəʊ/

In line 4 we found a problem with the world only, he did not pronounce the

diphthong /əʊ/. He said /ɒnlɪ/. This is because in Spanish we do not have any

sound similar to a schwa and that is why schwa sound is so difficult to produce.

Furthermore, we found a similar problem in the line 11, he pronounced correctly

the first no /nəʊ/, but the second one was pronounced by him exactly as in Spanish

even though he pronounced one word immediately after the other.

Grammar analysis

Grammatical tense: Difficult is for me listening and speaking because the people

are speaking very fastest

Leonardo: the people are speaking very fastest.

Correct: the people speak very fast.

Analysis: He used present continuous in the sentence “people are speaking

very fast”. He was describing an action that is regular, true and normal. This

characteristic is a proprietary feature of present simple tense, but he used present

continuous. This tense misuse is due to interference in his knowledge. He did not

realize that he was not describing an activity in progress.

Order of constituents: Difficult is for me listening and speaking because the

people are speaking very fastest

Leonardo: Difficult is for me listening and speaking.......

Correct: Listening and speaking are difficult for me because......

Analysis: Leonardo produced a sentence in which he located the subject after the

verb. Moreover, he used an adjective to start the sentence. The adjective was

defining the subject so in this case it is appropriate to locate it in the predicate of

the sentence. It is due to learners tend to transfer the sentence structure of his

native language.

Proposal

The learner has serious deficiencies in his speaking production skill. We can

attribute this situation to an inadequate preparation due to a deficient teaching

process or to a lack of motivation by the learner. Leonardo needs to improve

mainly in grammar, because he has a weak knowledge in this aspect. One way to

improve it is providing him with grammatical structures, to make easier for him to

understand the order of the constituents of sentences in the English language. For

example the structure of present progressive is: s+ v+ ing+ c. To have an effective

improvement Leonardo must perform exercises where words can be ordered

depending on their use. This could be done using programs such as Focus on

Grammar or online web sites. It should also be reinforce the use of different types

of words like adjectives and nouns to make it easier for him to be able to identify

them and form sentences with the correct order. Moreover he could use the

computer programs available in the University such as Pronunciation Power in

order to practice, for instance vowel and final sounds, among others, to overcome

his mistakes. A good exercise to improve pronunciation is to record himself saying

a short text, and then listening and reading the text at the same time comparing

what he has said with what the text said. Thus he clearly is going to identify the

mistakes that he made.

Conclusion:

As we have seen during this course, there are many hypothesis, techniques

and approaches about the learning process of the second language, that help us to

understand the process and it give us strategies to develop in a better way how

students learn a second language.

We could observe that our interviewee was very nervous even afraid of

speaking. As well as Krashen suggested in his hypotheses, the affective filter has

an important role in speaking production. During the interview we observed that our

interviewee was very nervous and that factor affected the production of his speech.

Moreover, the lack of knowledge about grammatical rules contributed to the

production of sentences that were not well created. That is why it is very important

to have a good model of teaching, where we can mix different methods and

techniques in order to create a useful model that would cover all the students’

needs in the classroom.

Finally, If the student is able to understand l2 language structure then it will

became something natural to him to use effectively the grammar rules in speaking

productive skill.

Index

Page

1. Introduction 1

2. Learner’s Background 2

2.1 Student’s Background 2

2.2 English studies 2

3. Testing 3

3.1 Taped interview 3

3.2 Phonetic transcription 4

4. Analysis 5

4.1 General Analysis 5

4.2 Phonetic Analysis 6

4.3 Grammatical Analysis 7

5. Proposal

6. Conclusions