Focus on the learner Essay

A. Learners visibilityVirginia is a 29-year old native Spanish speaker born in Madrid. She is currently studying a professional training course and full treatment as an animal c artaker. She is unitary of the A2 or wide-eyed proficiency train disciples of the Celta Teacher Training Program at International ho enforce lecture School. She took part of the same program two years ago, but she didnt continue studying side of meat afterwards.Virginia studied English in direct and secondary schooldays following a traditional teaching method, which utilise grammar as the starting point and foundation, for the development of all vocabulary skills speaking, listening, paternity, and reading, even there was relatively little focalization on speaking and listening.As traceed by Virginia, she was exposed to explicit information round the building of the lyric and to rules that she had to internalize finished repetitions and direct translation with little or no fortune of par ticipating in activities that encourage significant communication. This item hindered the development of her speaking skills, and made her fail in her attempts to attain the inevitable fluency and confidence to successfully communicate in English during her trips abroad.cognition of grammar without meaningful practice of the linguistic communication is ineffective, as Jim Scrivener says There is no point knowing a lot slightly language if you undersidet use it (which sadly, has been the experience of many language learners in the preceding(a) times able to conjugate a verb, but unable to respond to a elemental question) (Scrivener, 2005 146)As a result of the different frustrating situations she had to introduce when trying to make herself understand in foreign countries, and due to her cacoethes for travelling, she developed an intrinsic need to study English. She thinks English is a lingua franca that opens doors to different cultures, on the contrary, she doesnt com mit any extrinsic motivation as she doesnt need to speak English for any other purposes than socializing and travelling.She is a participative student who has n ever so missed a class. Her favoredactivities are the ones that foster speaking skills, peculiarly role-plays or discussions in groups, because they utilise her the opportunity to interact with her classmates and communicate in real time nigh real or similar to real life situations.Virginias development style is visual a technique she uses in browse to while words is seeing the words in her head and she can wear out understand and remember interpretations by writing them down or flavour at pictures and diagramsShe claims that one of her strengths is her knowledge of grammar rules associated with verbs conjugation specifically the use of simple present and present continuous and adds that writing is the easiest among the four language skills, because writing tasks provide enough time to brainstorm and choose the rig ht(a) language to express her ideas. Among her weaknesses she mentioned her lack of fluency, because she has not time to think on the grammar rules when she speaks, especially when talking about a past event, as she hardly ever knows whether the verb she wants to use is regular or irregular.B. actors line problems and SolutionsAnalyzing Victorias payoff in class I could notice that she has two evident language problems one of them is the use of simple past of irregular verbs, and the other one is the differentiation of the vowel expectants /a/ and //. I find these problems in the grammar and orthoepy areas very interesting to analyze, because both of them are very common in Spanish native speakers learning ESL, therefore, finding engaging and interesting activities to overtake them could be helpful in similar cases in the future. Examples and solutions for the students language problems in the different areas are exposed belowGrammarVirginia struggles with development irregula r verbs in the pastIm learning to surf. I buyed a surfboard. Im loving it although Im not very good. The teacher who teach me English when I was a pincer was notstrict I lose the train this morning (neither the correct word has been chosen in this case miss, however, I only if focus on the verb)In order to help Virginia with her problem in this grammar area, I keep decided to use the activities of the lesson Girls night out unit 5, pages 56 and 57 of the Elementary students book bare-ass English File, Oxford University Press. The subject of the lesson revolves around a group of young person female journalist for a famous womens magazine who are asked to go out for the evening with her girlfriends, and then bring through a report about their experiences. The topic is engaging, as it suits Virginias age, gender, interest (tackles some ethnic matters of different countries) and is quite close to her cultural background, considering that Spaniards are very tender and much of the ir life is lived in the streets. The material exposes the student to the structure through reading, listening and speaking activities.Virginia will have to deduce which are the past stress of a set of irregular verbs from the text in order to do exertion 3A. Grammar (look at the reports again and find the past tense of these irregular verbs), and then listen and practice the pronunciation of the verbs in exercise 3. B (listen and check, practice saying the verbs). She will also have the opportunity to fill in sentences with the correct form of the same irregular verbs in exercise 3C 1 and listen these verbs within a meaningful background in exercises 4 B and C (Listen to Silvia talking about their girls night out).In terms of speaking, the student will have to use the simple past of irregular verbs in the exercise 5C (Think about the pull through time you went out with friends, look at the questions and plan your answers) Virginia will have plenty of opportunities to see and use the target language as in real life communication.1 This exercise send the student to the explanation on page 130 (5C) and to the exercise on page 131 (5C)orthoepyVirginia struggles with discriminating the /a/ and // sounds. I filled in a enrolment form for a diving school /dv/ The school has wifi /w f/The school has a library /lbrri/To help her to differentiate the pronunciation of the vowel sounds /a/ and //. I have chosen the lesson Wine, win, unit 5 of the book English Pronunciation in use, Cambridge University press pages 30 and 31. Besides providing explanatory pictures of mouth modulation for a better pronunciation (Section A and B), it offers exercises that focus exclusively on the different pronunciation of negligible pairs, which usually have nonnative speakers, as Spanish does not differentiate between prospicient and short vowels.Minimal pairs effectively facilitate pronunciation acquisition. When learners compare and blood discrete sounds in the environment prese nted in minimal pairs, the importance of these sounds in denoting word meaning is transferred to their mind naturally. Experience shows that pronunciation classes make students more(prenominal) conscious of their own pronunciation and aware of ways in which their pronunciation differs from the model offered (Rajadurai, 2001 14)Virginia will have to spot the /a/ sound among minimal pairs in exercise A and the // sound in exercise B. The student will also have to discriminate and identify the words that have the/a/ or the // vowel sounds in exercise 11.1. (Make words with these beginnings and endings and write them in the correct part of the table) and in the exercise 11.2 (Read the dialogue. Circle the sound /a/ and underline the//).Despite the fact that this material doesnt feeler pronunciation within a context similar to real life, it offers a lot of practice opportunity, which in my opinion as a nonnative speaker of English is essential for the reason that Spanish phonological carcass is significantly different from that of English, particularly in the aspects of vowel sounds.ConclusionVirginias English lesson at school were focused on talking about the language rather than on talking in the language as a result, we can deduce that she was not exposed to proper and utile input since these type of classes do not require that teachers be experts or even fluent in thelanguage. However, her motivation, along with the use of relevant and meaningful materials as the ones presented in this essay can help her to improve her language skills and attain proficiency in English as a result.ReferencesHancock, M (2003) English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge University Press. Oxenden, C, Latham-Koening, C and Seligson, P. New English File, Elementary Student (2007). Oxford University Press. Scrivener, J (2005) Learning Teaching, A guidebook for English Language Teachers. Second Edition. Macmillan Books for Teachers. Rajadurai, J. (2001). An investigation of the effecti veness of teaching pronunciation to Malaysian TESL students MacMillan mental lexicon http//www.macmillandictionary.com/