Mohamed Agrtene
Assignment 1: focus on the learner
The student I am focusing on is a 40 old female from China. Mandarin is her mother tongue and the only language she fluently and accurately
masters. She has been living in China her entire life and travelled to the UK in order to study English and learn about the country’s culture. Ms.
Chung Peng has been in the UK for one month and it is apparently noticeable and reflected through her elementary level of the target language.
She hasn’t got a job at the moment, but she said that she enjoys being a student and she is learning English for an intrinsic motivation reason
rather than an extrinsic one, which is “learning for pleasure and enjoyment” and because of her being interested in learning English language in
general. Chung peng is staying with an English host family in York. She has to communicate with them in English therefore she has no choice but to
speak in English with her host family. Her motivation for learning English is for personal reasons as she enjoys being here in the Uk and speaking
English is a real pleasure for her. As the student has never studied English language in China, it was not applicable to ask her about where did she
study English before she came here as well as what were the classes like.
From the observation of this student during my teaching practices and throughout my interaction with her in the class, she has got an auditory style
of learning as she enjoys listening activities. Chun Peng is that type of learners who like to listen to English being spoken and she prefers to work in
groups rather than taking the initiative to speak and participate willingly in the class. The student I have been focusing on is an elementary student.
in other words, she is still struggling to build up the solid grounds of her language and that is why she tends to hang her head in shame and avoids
classroom participation and full linguistic immersion.
According to her, she said it is fine to make mistakes and to she also likes to be corrected. During my observation of the student, I noticed that she
uses her translation dictionary “ English <> Chinese” to look up the meaning of words. “Using the dictionary helps her to understand the overall
meaning of the sentence”, she said. Chun Peng likes receptive activities such as listening as well as productive activities because she wants to
improve her speaking and grammar. When it comes to classroom activities, she is more confident and relaxed while the teacher is telling stories,
doing exercises with her classmates, participating in class discussions and playing games while learning English language. The observed student
learns her new grammar and vocabulary through practicing and rehearsing the target language as she called in her own words “repeating”.
Area of analysis
Grammar: 1. (Adverbial word order)
What the student said/wrote
●
“Everyday, I cook two meals
for my parents”
problem/confusion
problem:
The learner has incorrectly placed the
adverbial of time at the beginning of
the sentence. This grammatical error
is commonly produced by chinese
speakers when they speak english
which is a word order classified error,
that was due to Chinese express by
means of adverbials, word order and
context.
Remedy:
To remedy this grammar error, the
following task is going to be used to
consolidate and practice the position
of the adverbs of frequency:
Corrected form
I cook two meals for my parents
everyday.
- As a warm-up
The student is going to read through
the text and underline the adverbs of
frequency.
- Task 2 Grammar position of
the adverbs of frequency /
section a.
- (set up the task and make the
learner work on the activity;
page 30. (see attached
document).
2. (Definite articles)
●
“Because….days are very
long.”
Because the days are very long.
Problem:
The learner forgot to include a definite
article “the” before days which makes
their sentence ill-formed as it lacks
the article.
This non-use of the article is due to
the fact that there are no articles in
chinese language. Therefore,
students find it hard to use them.
Remedy:
See attached task below:
A. the use of articles a, an and
the.
Area of analysis
Vocabulary:
What the student said/wrote
●
I look...the TV
problem/confusion
Problem:
Corrected form
I watch the TV.
The learner is confusing the “ to
watch news” and “ to look news”
that is likely because there is a similar
or a close meaning between the two
words.
Remedy:
See attached exercice, entitled Look,
Watch?
Pronunciation:
Questions can start with the werb
Questions can start with the verbs.
it is common for Chinese students
who learn English to ignore the /v/
sound as it is mostly absent for most
of Chinese dialects. Therefore, it is
treated sometimes like a /w/ or /f/
as also in “invite” which is
/v/
pronounced in inwite
References:
1. Cambridge English Empower A2 Teacher's Book © Cambridge University Press 2015
2. Learner English, Michael Swan, Bernard Smith, Penny Ur, Cambridge University Press
“ Chinese speakers” category
3. http://englishspeaklikenative.com/resources/common-pronunciation-problems/chinese-pronunciation-problems/
4. Susan boyer, Understanding spoken English, teacher's photocopiable activities for classroom interaction; international edition, pp(38).
5. http://busyteacher.org/
6.