Part 1: Background
The students attending the elementary language course at IH are mostly Ukrainians. It is a mixed ability group ( beginner/ elementary level). There are 10 students in the class( 2 males and 8 females). The age ranges from 17 to 67.They are interested in travelling , literature , cooking and sports. The reasons for learning English are mostly travelling , communication and memory training . They have both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. “In discussion of motivation an accepted distinction is made between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation that is motivation which comes from outside and from inside “ ( Harmer,51) Their extrinsic motivations for learning English are based around their personal development. They aim to improve their speaking and writing ability which will help them find a better job( Extrinsic motivation) train memory and interact with native speakers( intrinsic motivation). The“Learning Styles Questionnaire”( Tanner and Green, Tasks for teacher education ,Longman 1998) helped to identify the learning styles of this group :7 students are visual learners , 2 of them are auditory learners and only 1 student is a kinaesthetic one. The preferred activity types include speaking , writing and listening. Most of the students learnt English at school and university as a part of the compulsory curriculum . Students do their best to use only English at the lesson , they are involved in all the class activities . Many of those who were shy at the beginning are now more confident and ask questions for further clarification , though they lack essential vocabulary and they are not fluent enough. They are quite good at doing reading , and speaking tasks . Reading comprehension is the skill students are most successful in although they sometimes have difficulties with unfamiliar words. Writing tasks turned out to be more complicated for them , students have difficulties with spelling and make a lot of grammar mistakes ( tenses , articles) .Listening is also the skill students struggle mostly with. “ Even if someone knows all the grammar and lexis of a language , it does not necessarily mean that they will be able to understand a single word when it is spoken.” (Scrivener,249). It could be due to the fact that they are less exposed to English spoken by native speakers.
Part 2 : Strengths and Weaknesses
The student I have observed to do this assignment is a 67-year old woman. Her name is Galina. She is a retired engineer . I admire this woman , she is so enthusiastic about learning English . She is attending this course to improve her memory (intrinsic motivation ). She is a visual learner. Galina is the weakest student in the group ( due to the age factor and not having any learning for a long time ).
Successful language use:
|
Grammar |
Galina said : “ I am fond of travelling, I am interested in cooking and embroidering.” |
|
Vocabulary |
She said : I participate in different contests .” |
|
Pronunciation |
It is really interesting./ʳ/ At that time I read books./ / |
Errors:
|
Area |
Errors |
What is wrong ? Should be |
Why did the student make the mistake ?(possible reasons) |
|
Grammar |
The student wrote:
“ This are houses and that are trees ,” |
Wrong form of the demonstrative pronouns ; the correct sentence should be “ These are houses and those are trees .” |
The student knows the rule about the singular form of demonstrative pronouns .The reason is over-generalization |
|
Vocabulary |
The student wrote :
“ Ann is a high girl.” |
Wrong word, it should be “tall” |
L 1 interference. In Russian and in in Ukrainian the same word can be applied to describe a person and a building. |
|
Pronunciation |
The student said :
“ This / zis /is a very interesting thing /sin/”
|
Wrong sounds , they should be / /this And / / thing |
L 1 interference. Sounds / / do not exist in Ukrainian, so Ukrainians tend to pronounce /z/ instead of / /and / / instead of / / |
Part 3 : Helping the learner
3.1 Dealing with pronunciation problems
Mispronouncing the "th" sound by making a simple "s" or "z" sounds is very common among English language learners, so to help my students I would suggest some online dictionaries ( Google Translate) that show the pronunciation of the words. . I would also use some oral drills which I took from the website(www.vitaeducation.org) .
The aim: To practise pronouncing /θ/, /ð/ sounds.
Rationale :to achieve the correct pronunciation of the sounds /ð /and /θ/.
Procedure:
First, I would demonstrate how to pronounce the /θ/ " and /ð /sounds . correctly . Then I would practice pronounciating /θ/ and /ð / as separate sounds, after that I would ask students to listen to the words and repeat. Then I would drill these sounds in the sentences with the words containing these sounds..
3.2 Dealing with grammar problems
To help students improve their grammar I have provided activities that I believe would help them. These are exercises from the coursebook “ Enterprise 1” Express publishing and from the website (www.language-worksheets.com) .
The aim : to demonstrate and practise using demonstrative pronouns.
Rationale: using pictures for demonstrating the difference between the demonstrative pronouns would be most helpful to my student who is a visual learner.
First I would explain the difference between “ this” and “ these” , “that” and “those”. The exercise with pictures would be most helpful . Then students could practice them in the “ fill in the gap exercise “ .
Bibliography:
1.Harmer , J. The Practice Of English Language Teaching.3rdEdition. Longman, 2001
2.Scrivener ,J . Learning Teaching ,3dEdition. Macmillan , 2011
3. Tanner and Green, Tasks for teacher education ,Longman 1998
4. www.language-worksheets.com 5.www.vitaeducation.org
6.Enterprise 1 Beginner Express publishing, 2002
Word count :965