language learner profile

Acquisition and Learning of English as a Foreign Language Betancur-Murillo, M. & Troncoso-Ibarra, C.

Correa-Pérez, R., Roa-Ghiselini, I., & Fuentealba-Cartes, A. Semester 1, 2015

[LANGUAGE LEARNER PROFILE]

María de los Angeles Betancur M.

EFL Teaching Program

Universidad Católica de la Santísima

Concepción

Cynthia Troncoso Ibarra

EFL Teaching Program

Universidad Católica de la Santísima

Concepción

INDEX

1. LEARNER’S BACKGROUND-------------------------------------p. 2

2. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION (number each line)------------pp. 3 - 5

3. PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION of 3 chosen lines----------------p. 5

4. ANALYSIS AND EXAMPLES------------------------------------pp. 5 -10

4.1 General analysis--------------------------------------------------pp. 5 - 6

4.2 Phonetics and phonology (Examples and analysis)-----------pp. 6 - 8

4.3 Grammar (Examples and analysis)-----------------------------pp. 8 - 9

5. PROPOSAL AND CONCLUSIONS-------------------------------pp. 10 – 13

6. REFERENCES-------------------------------------------------------p. 14

7. APPENDIX-----------------------------------------------------------pp. 15 - 18

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LEARNER’S BACKGROUND

The interviewee of the present examination is a ten-year-old girl who studies in

the Educadora Eulogia Bórquez Pérez elementary school. This school includes the

teaching for children from kindergarten to 8th grade. It is a public school and it is one of

the most important schools into Chiloé Island, where it is located. According to the

mission and vision of Educadora Eulogia Bórquez Pérez school the knowledge is not

only in the level of knowledge in terms of contents that the students acquire and learn,

but also in relationship with the values people can have, especially responsibility,

respect and generosity - words that appear in the insignia of the school. Currently, the

interviewee is in fifth grade. She lives in the countryside in Quellón – a small town

located at the southern area of Chiloé Island, in the tenth region of Chile. She lives with

her parents and her little brother. Her mother works as a teacher of students with special

needs in the same school the girl studies, and her father works as a metalsmith. None of

them have experience in the area of English language. Her baby brother attends a

nursery school.

The interviewee really likes spending time playing with her friends, practicing

taekwondo and also practicing rhythmic gymnastics after her classes, but at the same

school (in extra program activities). She is not very sure about go to school to study,

because she affirms that she does not like all the subjects, being her favorite subject

physical education.

She has had English classes since first year of elementary school, at Educadora

Eulogia Bórquez Pérez school, twice a week. However, this year she has English classes

three times a week. Her results are not totally successful in this area of study, because

she even had got some red marks in the previous years of study in English as a foreign

language. However, she likes to memorize some English words and replace the

corresponding Spanish words by using the term in English that she remembers.

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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION

Hello.

1. Hello.

How are you?

2. Fine.

I am going to tell you something before we start, ok?

3. Okay.

This interview is for a task called “Language Learner Profile” for the

“Acquisition and learning of English as a foreign language” course and you

are helping my workgroup to do it. But don’t be shy or nervous, because the

mark for this task is for my group, not for what you are going to say. Ok?

4. Ok.

My name is María de los Angeles Betancur Murillo, and my partner is Cynthia

Troncoso, we study English Pedagogy at UCSC.

5. Okay.

So, let’s go… how old are you?

6. Emm… I am ten.

What do you like to do?

7. Emm… Jumping the rope… and… ___gymnastics.

Ok, and where are you from?

8. Temuco.

Aha, where do you live?

9. Quellón.

Can you describe your home?

10. My home is… emm, yellow.

Is it a big home or a small home?

11. A big one.

Right. Now, can you read the following sentences, please?

12. Yes. Carolina… is a student. The competition is in Maipú.

13. Carolina is in… 6th grade. The visit is for four weeks.

Excellent. Can you identify any cognate there?

14. Yes. Emm… Student… estudiante, competition… competencia, grade…

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15. grado, visit… visita.

Very good! Do you like to listen to music?

16. Yes.

Do you know any English singer?

17. Yes!

Who is he or she?

18. Michael Jackson.

Great, can you tell me something about him?

19. Ok… mmm… he sing pop music and he dance. He is dead.

Ok… Which is your favourite Michael Jackson’s song? And why?

20. Emm… Billy Jean. Because… mmm… I like to dance__.

Very good! I like it too… I remember that you said you like sports. Is that true?

21. Yes, gymnastics and taekwondo.

So, can you read aloud the following text called “Singapore Sports School”,

please?

22. Ok. “Singapore Sports School.

23. Are you good at sports? Can you imagine a school where the only things

24. students do is practice sports? That is the case of the students at the

25. Singapore Sports School in Asia, a school specialized in sports. The children

26. do sports such as football, tennis, athletics, etc. the teachers are professional

27. sportspeople, and the children enjoy going to school every day. The facilities

28. of the school are: two Olympic swimming pools, a multi-sport auditorium, a

29. synthetic football field. A gym. A cycle track. Two tennis courts.

Excellent, now please tell me if the statements I am going to read are true or

false

30. Okay.

The Sports School is in Europe

31. Mmm… false?.

The children do different types of sport

32. True.

The teachers are not good at sports

33. False?.

The facilities of the school include two gyms

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34. Emm… false?

Excellent! Thank you very much…

35. Okay

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

As it is stated in the general analysis, during the interview, the student commits

some basic mispronunciation mistakes when answering interrogations about her

personal information and also while reading some passages of a textbook. The

following phonetic transcriptions are the graphical interpretation of those mistakes, in

order to make them clearly comprehensible.

Selected Text

A. Jumping the rope and gymnastics (line 7)

B. My home is yellow (line 10)

C. Yes. Student… estudiante, competition… competencia, grade… grado, visit…

visita (line 12)

Phonetic Transcription

A. / ‘dʒʌmpɪŋ də ‘rəʊp ænd dʒɪm’nʌstɪk / (line 7)

B. / maɪ ‘həʊm ɪs ‘dʒeləʊ / (line 10)

C. / ‘jes / / ‘əstudɪənt/ / kɒmpe’tɪtʃən / /’greɪd / /’ vi:sɪt / (line 12)

ANALYSIS AND EXAMPLES

General Analysis

The objective of the interview is to illustrate the main linguistic issues of the learner

at the moment of answering questions about her life and personal preferences, and while

reading a passage of her English student’s book.

The student’s performance during the entire interview does not have big mistakes.

Despite of being a little nervous, due to the fact of the recorder is on the table, she tries

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to answer as many questions as she can, and with good results (clear and concise

responses). The majority of the questions about personal information are correctly

answered and understood by the learner. All the information asked is based on the fifth

grade English student’s book prescript by the Ministry of Education of the Government

of Chile, in order to elicit sufficient language and understanding from the student.

The most representative mistakes committed by the student, and the points our

workgroup focused the research are going to be analyzed in the following order:

Phonetics and phonology

Grammar

The interviewee demonstrates a basic domain in the English language in her level of

proficiency. Furthermore, she shows herself as a self-confident girl; though, she feels a

bit dubitative when answering some questions, and especially when pronouncing

unknown words. However, the student achieves the main purpose of communicating her

ideas, and makes herself understood.

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY ANALYSIS

Regarding to the phonetic and phonological analysis, there are identified a few

mispronunciations in the responses that the learner produced. Here, the student’s

phonetic and phonological errors are going to be compared and contrasted with RP

pronunciation and transcription, which represents the ideal pronunciation of the

highlighted words.

A. / dʒɪm’nʌstɪk / (line 7)

B. / ɪs ‘dʒeləʊ / (line 10)

C. / ‘əstudɪənt/ / kɒmpe’tɪtʃən / (line 12)

The following chart denotes the most significant mispronunciations during the

interview:

Line Words Interviewee Pronunciation Ideal Pronunciation (RP)

7 gymnastics / dʒɪm’nʌstɪk/ /dʒɪmˈnæstɪks/

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10 is yellow / ɪs ‘dʒeləʊ / /ɪz ‘jeləʊ/

12 student -

competition

/ ‘əstudɪənt/

/ kɒmpe’tɪtʃən /

/ˈstjuːdənt/

/ˌkɒmpɪˈtɪʃən/

Line 7 stands for the mistake of changing the tense vowel /æ/ by the lax vowel /ʌ

/, which is more similar to the sound for the letter ‘a’ in Spanish language. According to

ESLAN (2015), this mistake is caused by a confusion of the learner between how the

words are spelled and how they sound. On the other hand, the final sound in the word

‘gymnastics’ (/s/) was clearly omitted, as it occurs when speaking Spanish too,

especially the Chilean variation of this language, where the final ‘s’ acts as a glottal

voiceless phoneme, similar to /h/ in the English language.

Line 10 illustrates the error of changing the voicing of the phonemes, in this case

‘is’ /ɪz/ (with /z/ as voiced consonant) was changed by /ɪs/ (with /s/ as a voiceless

consonant/, which again is the sound which is used in Spanish language for the letter

‘s’. Regarding to ESLAN (2015) this is one of the most frequent mistakes for a Spanish

learner of EFL, due to they tend to voice or de-voice consonants, maintaining the

mother tongue’s rules.

Additionally, the first sound in the word ‘yellow’ /j/ (palatal - approximant) was

changed by /dʒ/ (post alveolar – affricate), because the phoneme /dʒ/ apparently is more

a consonant than the phoneme /j/ for a Spanish speaker. This mistake occurs, in regard

to ESLAN (2015), because Spanish learners of EFL, and the correct pronunciation

requires a good level of understanding of the English language and its vowels and

consonants sounds to produce it. In the case of the highlighted word ‘yellow’, ESLAN

(2015) asserts that beginning a word with the phoneme /j/ is an issue for Spanish

speakers, due to the fact that their tongue “involuntarily comes into contact with the

palate when attempting to do this resulting in a consonant that sounds very similar to

/ʤ/ and sometimes /dj/”, which is very notorious for a native speaker.

Last example, line 12, exemplifies the same mistake of “inserting a schwa sound

or what is known as the ‘epenthetic vowel’ (…) before beginning with /s/ plus another

consonant” (ESLAN, 2015). This provokes a change in the phonemes and even in the

stress and intonation of the word, converting it into an almost-Spanish word. In this

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example, the word ‘student’ /’stjuːdənt/ was completely changed, making it parallel to

the Spanish word ‘estudiante’ which is a cognate – expressed by the learner with the

following pronunciation: /‘əstudɪənt/-, and make it more difficult to understand, due to

the fact that the relationship between the two words is true, and this aspect tend to blur

the English learners in terms of pronunciation and also writing. The word competition

/ˌkɒmpɪˈtɪʃən/ - also a cognate recognized by the interviewee is a common case for the

English language learners, “especially native Thai and Spanish speakers (…), because

they “have a hard time distinguishing the ‘sh’ /ʃ/ and the ‘ch’ /tʃ/ sounds in English. The

sounds are very similar, but they are definitely not the same to a native English speaker”

(Elemental English, 2009). That is why the interviewee committed the same mistake

changing the fricative /ʃ/ by the affricate phoneme /tʃ/, being both of them post alveolar.

This error is also made in Chile because of the social issue present in the Spanish

speakers’ society, which is related to the social status the phoneme /ʃ/ represents. People

incline to associate that consonant sound with the lower social classes of our country.

It is important to mention that the mistakes recognized are common in this area of

linguistics in every beginner student in terms of English as a foreign language, mainly

for the reason that while learning and acquiring a new language it is produced a

phenomena called “interlanguage”, which according to Lightbown (1983:217-241)

means that a student of a foreign language creates his/her own linguistic system when

he/she is not very proficient, to achieve the aim of communicating but using some

features of the mother tonge; and even though she made the errors described before, she

made herself understood in a precise way, as it was asserted previously.

Grammar

Concerning to grammatical analysis, there were a little quantity of mistakes in the

answers that the interviewee produced. Here, the student’s grammatical errors are going

to be compared and contrasted with the correct form, which represents the best way of

expressing the underlined ideas.

A. Jumping the rope and __gymnastics (line 7)

A.1. Jumping the rope and practicing gymnastics.

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The first grammatical mistake identified (line 7) was the simple omission of the

transitive verb ‘practicing’ in the sentence - which in this case needs an object

(‘gymnastics’), falling in the parallelism mistake of Spanish speakers, because of the

relation between the features numbered within the sentence. In addition, the named

verb joined with the noun ‘gymnastics’ is a gerund phrase that means that it is not

possible to omit the verb to express the complete idea of that the student likes

jumping the rope and practicing gymnastics. The cause of this mistake could be the

anxiety that the student felt to finish the interview quickly and in an appropriate

way. Moreover, this sort of errors occurs due to the wrong use of compensational

strategy by the learner. That is an important factor to take into account at the

moment of evaluating a speaking performance.

B. He was a famous singer… he sing pop music and he dance. He is dead (line 19)

B.1. He was a famous singer… he sang pop music and he danced. But he is

dead.

The second simple grammatical mistake made by the learner is related not only

to subject - verb agreement, but also to grammatical tense. Because as it is shown in

example B, the speaker began to talk in past tense; nevertheless, she changed the

verb tense into the present simple, but adding another mistake: using a subject in

third person singular and a verb in third person plural form. The real solution could

be just following the first verb tense she used to exposed her ideas, because that was

the correct verb tense to talk about somebody who is already dead. The intransitive

verb (no object) ‘sing’ ought to be changed into its past tense form ‘sang’, and in the

following phrase must be ‘he danced’ to be coherent with the expressed opinion.

C. Billy Jean. Because I like to dance__ (line 20)

C.1. Billy Jean. Because I like to dance it.

The last example of grammatical mistakes has to do with the omission of the

functional word ‘it’ at the end of the sentence. Even though ‘dance’ is not a

transitive verb – which means that not always is necessary an object – in this kind of

sentences it is needed, for the reason that the student was talking about a special

song that she enjoys to dance it is significant that she includes that fact into the

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reason of why she like it. That is why the correct expression could be ‘because I like

to dance it’, adding the objective pronoun ‘it’ to the enounced.

None of the mistakes presented in this section are too much meaningful, essentially

because none of them interfere with the communication of thoughts that the

interviewee wanted to express during the questions asked.

PROPOSED TREATMENT AND REMEDIATION

Pronunciation mistakes were the central problem in the interviewee's performance

that was possible to recognize; there are several reasons to postulate it:

First, the age because the student is a little child, and kids do not have the

necessary vocabulary to express themselves in the English language.

Another point is the interference of the mother tongue (L1) in the second

language (L2). Contrastive analysis has helped to explain some aspects of first

language influence on SLL (Second Language Learning) on phonological

awareness.

According to Correa, (2012) “the relationship between perception and

production is complex”. In this case, the student was trying to use the Spanish

rules into the English behavior of the language. It is caused, because as it is

known, in Spanish language the pronunciation is the same as the spelling of a

word in phonological terms.

Harmer (2005) makes a distinction between perfection and intelligibility.

Primary, perfection is defined as “the state or quality of being perfect, meaning to have

all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is

possible to be” (Oxford, 2015). And intelligibility is demarcated as “The state or quality

of being intelligible, meaning that somebody is able to be understood; comprehensible”

(Oxford, 2015). This assumption claims that not all the students want to sound as a

native speaker, because others learners want to use a more universal accent. For this

reason, the focus of this paragraph is that it is more important to be intelligible than to

be a perfect English speaker. Additionally, “Munro & Derwing (1995 as exposed by

Correa, 2012), the presence of a strong foreign accent does not necessarily result in

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reduced intelligibility”. Because in this context, the important concept to keep in mind

is the understanding of a transmitted message, not the excellence with the message is

transmitted.

According to Harmer (2005) there are some problems to remediate in the area of

phonetics and phonology:

What students can hear: This factor depends on personal aspects (for instance, the

nationality, or more specifically, the mother tongue of the language learner). Indeed,

learners will use the sound of their L1 in their L2 speaking.

e.g. Spanish speakers, when referring to /v/ and /b/ phonemes.

This occurs because the sound of /v/ and /b/ phonemes is different in English and

in Spanish; it is difficult for a Spanish speaker to understand when he/she hear the

words which are pronounced contain one of the specified phonemes. In the end, if

learners cannot distinguish one sound of the other, it will be impossible for them to

speak correctly (Harmer, 2005).

Dealing with this: The teacher could use the demonstration, diagrams and explanations

to show the students the differences between the pronunciation sounds of /v/ and /b/

phonemes. In this way, English learners are going to recognize the sounds and they

could speak correctly, but all this process is gradual and it will need time to achieve it

(Harmer, 2005).

In this way, students are going to by acquiring the pronunciation of the two

phonemes exposed previously. Indeed, it will be more as a process than a full of

information to memorize which at the end learners are going to forget because it will by

only learned but not acquired.

The intonation problems: Many teachers and students agree that intonation is such a

real difficult subject in the process of acquiring a language. However, this is absolutely

not a reason to abandon this area (Harmer, 2005).

This point could sound as a cliché but it is not. Intonation is a difficult area of

phonetic and phonology but teachers could apply several strategies, techniques,

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approaches and hypothesis to deal with this problem and they will find ways to make

the intonation issue understood.

How to improve and to teach intonation?

Harmer (2005:185) asserts that getting students recognizing different emotions

and expressions - intonation. Such as: surprising, boring, questions, etc. Besides, to get

learners to imitate the articulation of these moods, without discussing the techniques of

the different intonation patterns themselves.

On the whole, the most important technique is to show to the students how the

sounds are produced than to get learners to imitate the sounds. For this reason, it could

be applied using videos, or use the English teacher's performance to illustrate how the

language is produced.

Teaching pronunciation: “Teaching methods should address the issues of motivation

and exposure by creating awareness of the importance of pronunciation and providing

more exposure to input from native speakers” (Jones, 2002:180 as exposed by Correa,

2012).

“In the case of effective pronunciation instructions the research suggest that the

instructions should focus on suprasegmental aspects rather than segmental aspects of

pronunciation“ (Hanh, 2004, taken from Correa, 2012).

To clarify some concepts: Segmentals are vowels and consonants which these

phonemes are segments of a sentence.

Suprasegmental: (or prosodic features) are aspects of speech: stress, rhythm and

intonation.

Some pronunciation teaching examples

“Follow the approach taken in the lifelines book and have students to identify a list of

words (including: bird, word, worm, worth, curl, heard, first, lunch, etc.) in which they

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must find words with the / ɔ:/ sound. They are asked to identify the consonant /r/, which

is always present in the spelling of words with this sound” (Hutchinson, 1998, exposed

by Harmer, 2005:187)

With this example, teachers could show to the students how it is produced a particular

sound, and also teachers could apply other strategies in order to show the phoneme

sound by moving the lips.

Conclusions

As a conclusion, the interview allowed to be clarified that there are several mistakes

which are going to be contingent to different circumstances and each problem will be

dissimilar depending on the learner. An essential point to take into consideration is the

big amount of learning strategies that exist in the present time when teaching, because

teachers of a foreign language (and all other subjects) not only must deliver the contents

properly, but also must make the learner conscious of the process he/she is developing,

in order to be aware of the moment when the learner makes a performances after

receiving new knowledge.

In the case of the interviewee, her background information was not a problem at

all. Thus, she has had the same opportunities, hours and infrastructural characteristics as

the students who live in the city. Furthermore, she has not relevant problems, because

she presents language problems according to her age.

Based on Spanish speakers’ problems, and regarding to Jeremy Harmer (2005)

usually trying to use the L1 rules in sound aspects of L2 phonemes is an obstacle

difficult to avoid; although it is reduced with practice. That difficulty is showed in the

interviewee’s performance, due to the fact that she read the English sentences as she

was reading in Spanish language in terms of intonation and word stress. It is a

remarkable matter that knowing that in Spanish the spelling and pronunciation of a

word is the same. The investigated case will be easy to improve by the application of

strategies.

Finally, the motivation is a relevant factor to consider in the student interviewed; for the

reason that she likes practicing sports (gymnastics and taekwondo). Indeed, she prefers

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to practice sports in her free time, attending to extra program activities at her school

instead of being interested in the study of the English language or other subject.

On the whole, it is appropriate to use strategies and techniques to improve the

acquisition process of the students; nonetheless, in the interviewee’s performance it was

mainly focused on the topic of personal interests than on the area of being incapable to

develop her knowledge in a certain subject.

REFERENCES

Correa, R. (2012). How to teach pronunciation [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/9v5nbnzwdrdh/how-to-teach-pronunciation/, June 13, 2015.

Elemental English. (2009). “sh” [ʃ] vs.”ch” [tʃ] | English Pronunciation Lesson. Retrieved from http://www.elementalenglish.com/sh-vs-ch-english-pronunciation/, June 10, 2015.

ESLAN. (2015). Spanish Pronunciation Problems: Common Pronunciation Problems for Spanish Learners of English. Retrieved from http://englishspeaklikenative.com/resources/common-pronunciation-problems/spanish-pronunciation-problems/, June 10, 2015.

Harmer, J. (2005). The practice of English language teaching. Teaching pronunciation

(3rd edition). England: Longman.

Lightbown, P. (1983). Exploring relationships between developmental and instructional

sequences in L2 acquisition. In H. Seliger and M. H. Long (Eds.), Classroom

Oriented Research in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 217–243). Rowley,

MA: Newbury House.

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http://englishspeaklikenative.com/resources/common-pronunciation-problems/spanish-pronunciation-problems/

http://englishspeaklikenative.com/resources/common-pronunciation-problems/spanish-pronunciation-problems/

http://www.elementalenglish.com/sh-vs-ch-english-pronunciation/

https://prezi.com/9v5nbnzwdrdh/how-to-teach-pronunciation/



APPENDIX

BACKGROUND QUESTIONNAIRE

This questionnaire was created to elicit the speaking about the experiences that the

learner and her environment have in relationship to the English language, and to know

the context of the school in which the interviewee studies. For answering this survey our

group asked a set of questions not only to the student analyzed, but also to her mother

who could explain us in a deeper way the system in which the Educadora Eulogia

Bórquez Pérez School works with their children. All these questions were asked in

Spanish language to facilitate the capability of responding in an appropriate way for the

two people asked. The responses that were collected are in page 2.

I. ¿Cuál es la edad de la estudiante?

II. ¿Dónde vive la estudiante?, ¿con quiénes vive?

III. ¿Cuáles son las actividades favoritas de la estudiante?

IV. ¿La estudiante se siente a gusto dentro de su escuela?, ¿por qué?

V. ¿Cuál es la asignatura preferida por la estudiante?

VI. ¿En que se desempeñan los padres?

VII. ¿Los padres tienen alguna relación con el idioma extranjero Inglés?

VIII. ¿Desde qué nivel de enseñanza la estudiante atiende clases de Inglés?

IX. ¿En qué curso está actualmente la estudiante?

X. ¿Cuál es el nombre del colegio al que asiste la estudiante?

XI. ¿Dicho colegio es solamente de enseñanza básica?

XII. ¿Es del tipo público o privado?

XIII. ¿Cuántos niveles de enseñanza incluye?

XIV. Sabemos que es un colegio connotado en su región, ¿se debe esto a su misión y

visión?, ¿cuáles son los valores que el establecimiento pretende entregar a sus

educandos?

XV. ¿El establecimiento tiene una relación especial con el habla inglesa?

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XVI. ¿Cuántas veces por semana se imparten las clases de inglés en la institución?

XVII. ¿Qué resultados ha tenido la estudiante en el área de la lengua inglesa dentro del

establecimiento al que asiste?

XVIII. ¿La estudiante presenta interés en el área de la lengua extranjera?, ¿cómo se

presenta dicho interés?

INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE

PERSONAL INFORMATION

I. What do you like to do?

II. Where are you from?

III. Where do you live?

IV. Can you describe your home?

V. Do you like to listen to music?

VI. Do you know any English singer?

VII. Who is he or she?

VIII. Can you tell me something about him/her?

IX. Which is your favourite song of this artist? And why?

READING PASSAGES

Passage 1:

I. Can you read the following sentences, please?

- Carolina is a student

- The competition is in Maipú

- Carolina is in 6th grade

- The visit is for four weeks

II. Can you identify any cognate in the sentences you read?

Retrieved from Manonellas, A. (n.d.). Student’s Textbook: The English Village, 5°

básico (p. 19). Ministerio de Educación. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Cal y

Canto.

Passage 2:

III. Can you read aloud the following text called “Singapore Sports School”, please?

16



IV. Tell me if the statements I am going to read are true or false

___ The Sports School is in Europe.

___ The children do different types of sport.

___ The teachers are not good at sports.

___ The facilities of the school include two gyms.

Retrieved from Manonellas, A. (n.d.). Student’s Textbook: The English Village, 5°

básico (p. 32). Ministerio de Educación. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Cal y

Canto.

17



EXAMPLE OF AN ACTIVITY TO IMPROVE PRONUNCIATION

Based on the image, it is going to be created an activity to improve pronunciation issue

in elementary learners.

The teacher presents the learners “phonetics and phonology” issues, and includes the

English vowels in a chart to have a concise proof of what they are going to do.

Goals:

- Explain to the Ss that vowels are phonemes and that they are parts of every

existing word in the English language.

- Show the Ss that vowels are different in terms of sounds, especially

regarding to the same vowels in spelling (e.g.: /i:/ and /I/) in order to

recognize and differentiate them.

- Exemplify the previous point in a chart that includes two vowels that could

be the same in spelling but have different pronunciation.

Step 1: Teacher explains the chart activity; show to the learners the pronunciation of

each one of the vowels.

Step 2: Ss have to repeat aloud after they hear the teacher performance.

Step 3: Teacher produce one by one the words, the learners repeat them.

Step 4: Students have to define if the words are in the correct group on the chart or not,

depending on the sound they hear.

Step 5: Teacher provides feedback and summarize the important points.

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language learner profile

Documents

nursery school

public school

year of elementary school

area of english language

english classes

learning of english

english words

area of study