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Students: Erwin Blanco and Gerardo Zavalla

Teacher: MG. Roxana Correa

Subject: Didactics Two

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Language Learner Profile

Background

Relevant Information

Maximiliano José Toro Urrutia is an eighteen years old student. Currently, he is in

fourth grade in the Enrique Molina Garmendia high school in Concepción, Chile.

According to the information gathered he states that he has been learning English since 6th

grade in primary school until now; furthermore, he has never taken any English language

course. He has recently participated in an English debate organized by Mineduc. He affirms

that even though his team did not win, they obtained excellent results due to the fluency

and lexical richness.

Maximiliano does not have any native english speaker in his family, but he has

always liked English, for example TV programmes. For the future his plans are applying to

the University to be a teacher of English language.

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Taped Interview

Interviewers: Erwin Blanco / Gerardo Zavalla

Interviewee: Maximiliano José Toro Urrutia

Audio is available here: http://snd.sc/1dzXQwM

Interviewer : (I)

Interviewee: (S)

I: Good afternoon.

S: Good afternoon.

I: Louder.

S: Good afternoon.

I: Well, Now, we are gonna to apply you an interview for didactics this is a subject of

English language pedagogy. First of, I would like to know about you, for example, what is

your name?

S: Maximiliano Toro.

I: Okey, Maximiliano, how do you spell it.

S: M ei, m, ex, ai el, ai ei en, ou.

I: Ok thank you, well, who do you live with?

S: With my mom and my brother.

I: Ah, ok. You are 3.

S: Yes, 3.

I: Tell me something about your family, do you have any… how many brothers do you

have, how many sisters?

S: I have one brother and my dad; for example, don‟t live with me, but my mom yes.

I: Does your father live in Concepcion?

S: Yes, she “o sea” he live in Hualpen.

I: Ahh, ok, to continue, do you have pets?

S: I had.

I: What happened with them?

S: He died… like 3 month ago.

I: What was he?

S: A Dutch haunt, a hot dog.

S: A kind of small dog.

I: Was it nice?

S: He was very funny.

I: How did he die?

S: He had a, well we don‟t know exactly the reason, but I think he get a poison from…

I: He ate poison.

S: Yes.

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I: Ok well to continue would you tell me some story about you or a joke you would like to

tell a story for you, an interesting one.

S: When I was 8 I was rescuing a ball, a football and „cause my friends and I, we were

playing. But I had to jump over a (una reja) a fence, so in that moment I cut my hand, I

have this scar.

I: That long scar, was it…did you feel pain?

Of course, well at the beginning „cause after that my hand was so (sleave) „cause I didn‟t

feel nothing after that.

I: Ok oh my god that‟s not exactly a joke, you told me that you like football.

Yes.

I: Do you like football?

Yes, indeed.

I: What your favourite team player for example?

Juventus, an Italian football team

I: And player?

Player?

I: Just Any.

Camoranessi.

I: Why, why do you like him?

Because he is really good in what he like to do.

I: Which is football, ok I‟m thinking. Football is very interesting around the world.

Have you ever been to another country, region?

No, region of course, yes.

I: For example, a memorable experience you would like to tell, for example.

When I was 12 I went to Viña del Mar and it was really nice because it is a pretty nice city

and it has so many, I don‟t know, lights in the night and is very cool, a nice experience.

I: It was a really enjoyable experience; you told me you went in summer, which season of

the year do you like the most?

Winter.

I: Winter? Why?

Because, I don‟t know I like the rain, the sound of the rain, and the smell of the earth wet.

I: The wet leaves, the wet soil something like that. To finish, who do you think is going to

be the next president of Chile?

In 2014?

I: Yep, The next president.

I.. well What president I would like or what present is going to be?

I: Both what president do…you would like you to be?

Well, In my opinion I would like to be president Marcel Claude „cause I really, I am, I

agreed with the his (o sea) I mean his ideas and I think that Bachelet is going to be the next

president „cause….

To be honest / To be honest.

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Interview Analysis: Systems of the Language.

The interview that Maximiliano Toro answered is analyzed in this project

from the Grammatical, phonological and lexical perspective.

Lexical/Vocabulary analysis:

a) Misuse of like:

Analyzing from a native use of language the sentence “He died… like 3 month ago”

contains a filler that is not suitable. “Like” is not necessary to convey meaning and

probably is an interference from L1 to L2 (James, 1980; Nobel, 1982;Swan & Smith, 1987;

Brown, 2001; Parker & Riley, 1994; Horwitz, 2008), for example in Spanish it is common to

say “Murio como tres meses atrás”.

b) Use of unsuitable verbs

The interviewee used a grammatically comprehensible sentence to say that his dog dies by

eating poisoned food “He had a, well we don‟t know exactly the reason, but I think he get a

poison from…”, however the use of the verb get and the object poison is not natural and

could be incomprehensible for a native speaker. The use of GET may be due to the

exposition to American TV programmes were the verb GET is overused for too many cases

and uses.

c) Overuse of because („cause)

Maximiliano when asked for information tends to use the same structure statement/reason,

for example in these sentences:

● I was rescuing a ball, a football and „cause my friends and I

● well at the beginning cause after that my hand was so sleave (SIC) cause I didn‟t

feel nothing after that

● When I was 12 I went to Viña del Mar and it was really nice because is a pretty

nice city and it have, so many.

These structures could be grammatically correct but it is possible to realize that the lack of

more complex sentences is not the product of negative transfer or L2 interference but the

result of the exposition to TV language where show business and colloquial speakers of

English constantly use the most simplest sentences to express their thoughts, so it is easily

noticeable that the use of conjunctions such as for, since, due to, etc, is scarce. Also the

process of making coordinating sentence is almost inexistent.

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d) Misuse of an adverb instead of an auxiliary verb

In spoken English to avoid an unnecessary repetition of actions the speaker use an auxiliary

verb for example do/does, has/have. In the case of the answer given by maximiliano he

tends to transfer a Spanish language structure that resembles the use of auxiliary verbs, for

example in Spanish the sentence:

“I have one brother and my dad; for example, don‟t live with me, but my mom, yes” is

naturally said:

“Yo tengo un hermano y mi papa por ejemplo no vive conmigo, pero mi mama si”. The

example portrays a use of and adverb (si), that once translated into english is “yes” which is

a mistake. What maximiliano may have wanted to say is: “I have one brother, my dad

doesn‟t live with us, but my mom does”.

e) Code Switching

During the interview Maximiliano kept a rather fluent speech, without using too many

fillers, nonetheless suddenly and may be involuntarily he switched from English into entire

phrases in Spanish. This phenomena called code-switching (Milroy, L., & Muysken, P. 1995)

interferes in this interview with phrases such as “Yes, she “o sea” he live in Hualpen”,

“But I had to jump over a (una reja) a fence”, I agreed with the his (o sea) I mean his

ideas.

As exemplified before, the speaker when lacking specific language hesitates to continue and

comes back to L1, and instead of recurring to examples goes straightforward to phrases in

spanish not only extended to vocabulary but also in grammar and phonemes, in brief he

speaks spanish when specific vocabulary is not available in his lexis.

f) Collocation error

“And the smell of the earth wet” (64)

In this example we see a collocation problem of adjective+noun (seen previously). Here the

student was referring to the ground instead of the earth, so the correct form should be: And

the smell of the wet ground.

g) Vocabulary Profile

The GSL, namely, the general service list, are lists of the most frequent words of the

English language. Coxhead, Averil. (2000) developed a set of the two thousand most

frequent academic words in english (AWL), other list are K1 and K2 that cover the first one

and two thousand most frequent words in written english. In analizyng the vocabulary

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profile of maximiliano with the tools provided by lextutor.ca the results are as follows: The

84.5% of the vocabulary matched with the K1 list, the 6.25% belonged to the K2 list and

only 0.66% were academic words. Summing up it is clear that the interviewee‟s vocabulary

profile is eminently informal as expected in spoken language.

Grammar/syntax

a) Disagreement between subject and verb in 3rd

person.

“My dad (…) don‟t live with me”(17)

“He live in Hualpen” (19)

The interviewed student did not use the rule of third person singular correctly. The basic

rule of conjugating the third person singular is adding -s to the base form of a verb in this

case the correct form would be: My dad doesn‟t live with me; He lives in Hualpen.

b) Use of „cause instead of because

“A football and „cause my friends” (35)

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“To be President Marcel Claude „cause I really I am I agreed with the his ideas” (72)

“„Cause after that my hand was so (sleep)” (39)

“„Cause I didn‟t feel nothing after that” (39)

Although the use of „cause in informal and spoken language is accepted or normal. In the

interview the student overused this word too much. This may be due to a lack of synonyms,

from his vocabulary, of the same word such as: since, for, because, etc.

c) Misuse of a compound subject

“My friends and I, we were playing” (35)

When the subject of a sentence is made up of two or more elements, it's called a compound

subject. The individual elements in a compound subject are joined by words like and and or

or pairings like either/or and neither/nor. In this case My friends and I represents the subject

“we” so the correct form should be: My friends and I were playing, consequently avoiding

the pronoun “we”.

d) Misuse of simple present

“It have so many” (58)

When retelling an experience it should be used the past tense. In this case the interviewee

misused the past tense, the correct form should be: It had so many.

e) Misuse of adjectives

- “Good in” (52)

The student attempted to say that the football player was able to play football well. In that

sense the correct form of the adjective should be: Good at (sth).

“And the smell of the earth wet” (64)

Even though the word “earth” in this context is incorrect because the interviewee was

referring to the ground, this example shows a problem with word ordering, so the correct

form should be: “The smell of the wet earth”.

f) Misuse of double-negatives

“I didn‟t feel nothing” (40)

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Some of the most frequently misused words in English are anything and nothing. Anything

is used when the verb is negative and nothing is used when the verb is affirmative. The

correct form should be I didn‟t feel anything.

Phonetics and phonology

Three short extracts will be analyzed in this section. The phonetically transcribed extracts

will be analyzed considering stress patterns, phonetic articulation, intonation and connected

speech.

1. When I was eight, I was rescuing a ball, a football and „cause my friends and I, we were

playing. But I had to jump over a (una reja) a fence, so in that moment I cut my hand I have

this scar.

wen ˈaɪ wəz eɪt, ˈaɪ wəz ˈreskjuːɪŋ ʌ bɔːl, ə ˈfʊpbɔːl ənd kɔːz maɪ frendz ənd ˈaɪ, wi wər

ˈpleɪɪŋ. bət ˈaɪ hʌd tʊ dʒʌmp ˈɒvər ə ˈuːnə <reja> æ fens, ˈsoʊ ɪn ðʌt ˈmɒmənt ˈaɪ kʊt

maɪ hænd ˈaɪ hʌv ðɪs skɑr.

2. When I was 12 I went to Viña del Mar and it was really nice because is a pretty nice city

and it has, so many, I don‟t know, lights in the night and is very cool, a nice experience.

wen ˈaɪ wəz twelv aɪ ˈwent tuː <viña> ˈdel mɑːr ənd ɪt wəz ˈriːli naɪs bɪˈkɒz ɪz ə ˈprɪti

naɪs ˈsɪti ənd ɪt hæv, ˈsoʊ ˈmeni, ˈaɪ doʊnt nəʊ, laɪts ɪn ðə naɪt ənd ɪz ˈveri kʊl, ʌnaɪs

ɪkˈspɪrɪəns.

3. Well, In my opinion I would like to be president Marcel Claude cause I really I am, I agree

with the his ( o sea) I mean his ideas… and I think that Bachelet is going to be the next

president because ….

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wel, ɪn maɪ ɒˈpɪnɪɒn ˈaɪ wʊd ˈlaɪk tə bi ˈprezɪdənt marˈsel klɔːd kɔːz ˈaɪ ˈriːli ˈaɪ æm,

ˈaɪ ʌˈɡriː wɪð ði ɪz <o sea> ˈaɪ miːn ɪz aɪˈdiːʌz <…> ʌnd ˈaɪ ˈθɪŋk ðʌt <bachelet> ɪz

ˈɡɒʊɪŋ tʊ bi ðə nekst ˈprezɪdənt bɪˈkɒz <…>.

a) Stress Patterns

When it comes to analyze stress patterns, Maximiliano presents almost no faults in

individual words either content words or function words. The quality of the stress patterns

helps considerabily to convey meaning on the message since it helps to overcome the flaws

that Maximiliano shows in pronouncing the words.

Here the conjugated verbs are stressed and also the nouns, notice that the pronouns were

stressed to convey meaning considering the role of Maximiliano in the story.

wen ˈaɪ wəz eɪt, ˈaɪ wəz ˈreskjuːɪŋ ʌ bɔːl, ə ˈfʊpbɔːl ənd kɔːz maɪ frendz ənd ˈaɪ, wi wər

ˈpleɪɪŋ

In the sentence below it is remarkable that although maximiliano has not taken any in-depth

English language course he stresses lexical items very well. It might be that due to the

listening activities developed when watching American TV. Maximiliano has acquired the

natural General American accent pattern that is evident across his speech.

wen ˈaɪ wəz twelv aɪ ˈwent tuː <viña> ˈdel mɑːr ənd ɪt wəz ˈriːli naɪs bɪˈkɒz ɪz ə ˈprɪti

naɪs ˈsɪti ənd ɪt hæv, ˈsoʊ ˈmeni, ˈaɪ doʊnt nəʊ, laɪts ɪn ðə naɪt ənd ɪz ˈveri kʊl, ʌnaɪs

ɪkˈspɪrɪəns.

b) Connected speech issues

At the level of connected speech the speaker Maximiliano is easily noticeable that has

impairments in producing weak forms specially in conjunctions. For example in this extract

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he uses the strong form that is not suitable when speaking fluently for producing a

markedness that is not natural:

ʌnd ˈaɪ ˈθɪŋk ðʌt, phrase that must have been ənd ˈaɪ ˈθɪŋk ðət. We do not have answer to

explain why the speaker has a tendency to not to produce the schwa sound, but a hint is that

that sound does not have existence in the Spanish phonemic map.

Another point to remark is that in other sentence he almost pronounced perfectly all the

weak sounds:

wen ˈaɪ wəz twelv aɪ ˈwent tuː <viña> ˈdel mɑːr ənd ɪt wəz ˈriːli naɪs then again it is

possible that unconsciously when speaking fast, the the tendency for vowels in unstressed

syllables to shift towards central position helps him to pronounce correctly. It could account

for the sudden stop he did when pronouncing “To viña del mar”, since in that position he

swapped the schwa for a long u: sound, probably for he sped down.

c) Articulatory phonetics

When it comes to analize the quality of articulation in terms of the use of correct phonemes,

we came acroos at least two flaws that impair the quality of Maximiliano‟s speech. The first

fault is the tendency to not to pronounce the schwa sound specially when speaking slow or

when making pauses:

ˈsoʊ ɪn ðʌt ˈmɒmənt ˈaɪ kʊt maɪ hænd ˈaɪ hʌv ðɪs skɑr

In the setence above for example maximiliano did not pronounce the schwa sound and

replaces this sound with short vowels. It could be that the tendency to change the central

sound for other is the influence of General American accent or the irruption of Spanish

phonemes that were taken when intuitively we try to read from written texts without prior

phonetic training or poor acquisition in clases.

wel, ɪn maɪ ɒˈpɪnɪɒn ˈaɪ wʊd ˈlaɪk tə bi ˈprezɪdənt marˈsel klɔːd kɔːz ˈaɪ ˈriːli ˈaɪ æm,

ˈaɪ ʌˈɡriː wɪð ði ɪz

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The problem of changing sounds in Maximiliano‟s apeech is not limited to weak forms

present in connected speech, but also extended to nouns. an example of this is found in the

word opinion, that might start being pronounced with a central schwa sound. This issue is

also extended to diphtongs since the speaker also tends to change them for those similar but

without the schwa at the begginning, for instance in “SO”.

ˈsoʊ ɪn ðʌt ˈmɒmənt ˈaɪ kʊt maɪ hænd ˈaɪ hʌv ðɪs skɑr.

d) Phonetic Profile

Measuring the amount of phonemes uttered by Maximiliano, the figures reinforce our

analysis that accounts for a reduced amount of schwa sound and the diphthongs that include

that sound.

I the first chart we show the accent profile of a General American accent speaker

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The second chart depicts Maximiliano‟s phonetics profile where it is clear a reduced

amount of central vowel sounds. In this project it is possible to assert that there is an

interference of language 1 phonemes carried to language 2.

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The Learning Strategies Lesson planning form based on Chamot Activity “Writing

about family”

Content Area: Verbs Topic: Simple present test

Grade: 1-4 Medio

Objectives

Content Knowledge/skills: Use the present simple .

Learning Strategy: prepare a writing task with the daily routines.

Procedures

Preparation:

1.- Go around the room asking general questions about what students know about verbs.

● Do you know what a verb is?

● Can you name some of them?

● Do you know the different tenses?

● Can you name them?

It may be useful a chart with students answers.

2.- Ask students how they come up with the ideas.

Presentation

3.- Introduce the writing task about simple present in daily routine.

“Now you can talk about a friend. You are about to write a 10 lines paragraph about a friend‟s

routine, but first, we are going to review how the simple present of the verb are used”

4.- Show your own 10 line paragraph using simple present and model using examples of how the

simple present of the verb is used.

Practice

5.- Hand out the worksheet . “Select the correct form of the verb”. Make students to complete the

worksheet . Make sure the work. Monitor as they work.

Evaluation

6.- Divide students into groups of four. Have them to check their answer with other members of

their group and then report to the class.

7.- For homework, have students to perform one of the writing tasks.

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Expansion

8.- Have students do the following activity.

● Have them write a letter about his or her mother using simple present .

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Proposed treatment/remediation

Overcome the disagreement between subject and verb in 3rd

person.

Task

1. - Write a short paragraph (10 lines) about the daily routine of a friend.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

2. - Write the correct form of the verb in brackets.

Example:

I / you / we / they P L A Y, but! He / she / it P L A Y S (! go - goes, do - does, have -

has)

1. She usually (get) ______________________ up at 7 o'clock.

2. He usually (do)_______________________ his homework at half past six.

3. He usually (go) ______________________ to bed at 8 o'clock.

4. She usually (play) _____________________ tennis on Fridays.

5. They (go) _______________________ to school every morning.

6. I usually (take) ____________________ a shower in the morning.

7. He usually (take)___________________ a shower on Sundays.

8. She usually (read) _________________ a book in the evening.

9. She usually (have) __________________ breakfast at 7.30.

10. They usually (watch) __________________ TV from 5 to 7 o'clock.

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Conclusions and recommendations

After the interview applied to maximiliano it is possible to arrive to these conclusions.

Lexical profile

Maximiliano has a range of vocabulary that enables him to communicate his

thoughts easily, without stopping in most of the cases and recurring constantly to informal

spoken resources such as the word “like”. This overuse of certain lexical could lead to

oversimplification of spoken language impairing a lexical expansion to become a medium

level speaker. The main issue of Maximiliano is to suddenly stop and get elements from the

language 1 (Code switching), this impairment is serious and must be fixed as soon as is

possible by teaching him how to explain situation without specific language.

Grammatical profile

Analisyng from this systemic point, the range of errors is rather wide, encountering

mistakes in the use of tenses, disagreement between subject and verb in 3rd

person, misuse

of adjectives and improper use of double negatives among others. According to our

experience, we agree on the point that most of the grammatical mistakes in Maximiliano's

speech are due to two main factors: The continuous negative transfer from L1 to L2 and the

lack of opportunities to perform speaking activities that naturally might fix these errors. We

strongly believe that the grmmar of the subject would experiment a huge improvement if

the student were given the opportunities to speak almost daily with English speaker for he

would realize his mistakes and the fossilisation process may stop by being corrected day

after day. We do not encourage the grammar-sheet-like exercises to fix the problems

mentioned since what the speaker needs is to develop fluency without translating every

unknown word.

Phonological profile

Maximiliano Toro evidently has an accent and pronunciation closer to General

American tan the well known Received Pronunciation. Nowadays with less than 3% of the

people speaking RP around the world it is not an issue lest is a problem. In the case of the

subject of the project we consider that has a rather good fluency, the stress patterns are

quite accurate and the intonation is quite good only impaired by sudden stops when looking

for specific words. What we consider must be urgently taken into account are the lack of

weak form that are necessary for a proper meaningful communication. Worth is to mention

that slight phonemic changes in words are meaningful to native speakers.

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As far as the analysis as disclosed, the main issues in Maximiliano‟s speech is the

absence of phonemes that are not part of Spanish phonological system but that constitute an

important elements in the English language: We are referring to central vowel sound or

Schwa and also the absence of long vowels that were changed by short one as in the

constant use of “ʌ” sound when any kind of “a” like sound was required. In this particular

case we recommend to make Maximiliano aware of his flaws in pronouncing by making

aware of them. How?, we suggest two means: The first by teaching him the basis of

phonetics, specially focused on vowel sounds and by listening (and afterwards resembling)

the British accent specially in documentaries.