Assignment 2 – Focus on the learner

Part A profile of the learner

Background

Daniele is Brazilian, 34 years old, she is a salesperson and she is studying Marketing at university. She is
a basic student. She has never studied English in a language course; she studied a little English in high
school. She said she did not remember much of it.

Apart from the language course, she does not have much opportunity to practice English.

Motivation

She has been studying English for 4 months; she is interested and shows a positive attitude in class. She
studies it because she has a cultural interest in the language and wants to travel abroad; that would be
her instrumental motivation. She doesn’t need it in her work, and she doesn’t plan to get a job, that
requires English. She has always liked rock and roll, movies, she enjoys American Culture. She has a
stronger integrative motivation towards the language, which helps her to be determined to study; she
finds it difficult and has little time however.

Learning style

At home she likes listening to the audios of the workbook, and she likes to write sentences and check
them on a translator.

In the classroom, Daniele is a leader, well-organized, upbeat; she collaborates with her peers in the
activities. She says she likes to work with others especially to practice speaking, which she considers to
be the most difficult skill.

She also likes individual activities since she can make a self-assessment to improve on her studies.

She answered a Multiple Intelligence questionnaire and it confirmed that she is mainly an intrapersonal
student, she also has well balanced spatial-visual, linguistic, and interpersonal characteristics.

Ability in the four skills

She has a typical Brazilian accent, inserting intrusive vowels between consonants, syllable-timed rhythm,
etc. Apart from that, she doesn’t have a great difficulty in terms of mechanically reproducing the
correct sounds of English; she needs to practice it more and be aware of her accent issues.

On speaking she finds difficult organizing sentences in her mind before saying; she frequently forgets the
auxiliaries and feels insecure about the word order of sentences.

On listening she gets information from it, but she struggles a little.

On writing she has not worked much on it yet, she wrote short compositions about everyday situations;
she organizes her ideas well, she does not have great spelling problems, but still make some mistakes,
which is predictable at this stage of learning.

She likes reading and she infers meaning from the context favorably.
Part B

Analysis of students’ errors

Grammatical Error Correction Reason for Error

1. Omission of auxiliary verb in
Going to statements:
-We going to Library El Elenco.
-We are going to visit the
library El Elenco.
The student forgot the auxiliary verb
“ARE”. It is a mistake due to the
influence of L1, the future in
Portuguese is formed by the verb go
and the infinitive of the main verb.

2. Using the wrong adjective
pronoun:
-She lives with your parents.
Vocabulary Error
1.Use of wrong word:
-I am a salesperson actually.
-She lives with her parents.
Correction
-I am a salesperson at the
moment.
In Portuguese there is a single
possessive determiner for his and
her, which agrees in gender with the
thing possessed. When carried over
into English this cause a frequent
mistake for learners.
Reason for Error
It is a common false friend; this word
is close in spelling to the word in L1
that means “nowadays.

Pronunciation Error Correction Reason for Error

1. Adding a final “ɪ” sound to
words with a silent “e”.
-I have two dogs. - have /hævɪ/
2. Adding a vowel sound to final
consonant sound:
- She is reading the book
-book /bʊkɪ/
- I have two dogs.
-have – /hæv/
- She is reading the book
-book/bʊk/
It is unusual words ending in
consonants sounds in L1. Spelling and
pronunciation are closely related in
Portuguese; therefore the silent “e”
common in English is often
pronounced for Brazilian learners as
/ɪ / or /ɪ:/
All words ending in consonants
(except l, m, s, z and r) tend to be
given a final vowel sound.
Few consonants (sound and spelling)
can occur finally in Portuguese, so a
vowel sound is often added; usually
/ɪ / or /ɪ:/.

Part C
a. Grammatical Error: 1. Omission of auxiliary verb in “Going to” the statements.

Daniele in her composition omitted the auxiliary verb of the structure of Going to. She comprehends the
meaning of the sentence; she relates it to Portuguese, what leads her to the mistake. She did not get the
form of the sentence. Correcting this grammar mistake, it may help her to be aware of the auxiliary
verbs in sentence formation as a whole.

Activity: “Put the sentences in order”. The activity should be done individually first; then she should
check it in pairs. To turn this simple exercise into a more meaningful activity, I would write some
questions to check form for students to analyze the exercise, such as: Can I use DO as an auxiliary? (No);
Can I drop the auxiliary? (No).

Rationale: The exercise matches Daniele’s learning style; she presents intrapersonal, linguistic and
interpersonal characteristics.
b. Pronunciation Error: 2. Adding a vowel sound to final consonant sound.

Activity: Mark Hancock mentions a similar pattern - see attachments item 25 C, 25 D - to the Brazilian
speakers, who have difficulty in pronouncing words ending in two consonant. The solution proposed is
found on exercises 25.2; 25.3 and 25.4.

Rationale: This activity follows the intrapersonal characteristic of Daniele, she likes to work by herself,
and by doing this activity she can evaluate her development and be aware of her pronunciation issues.

Number of words: 1022

References

 J. Harmer. Practice of English language. 3rd Edition.Longman

 J. Scrivener. Learning Teaching English: “The Essential Guide to English Language
Teaching.Oxford.3rd Edition. Macmillan. 2011
 M. Swan. Smith. B Learner English. Cambridge. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press.2002
 M. Hancock. Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge. 4th Edition Cambridge University Press.2003
 Multiple Intelligences - https://howardgardner.com - viewed May 2018
 Exercise - http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/grammar/2g55-going-to-word-order.php - viewed May
2018