Assignment 1 Focus On The Learner

CELTA Assignment 1- Focus on the Learner
Hannah Rose
Submission date: 26/4/2015

Learner Profile
For this assignment, I interviewed a 48 year old male from Poland named Zbigniew or Zybi for short. He is currently in the elementary class at Manchester Academy of English. He arrived in the UK early on in 2012 with his family. He has lived in 3 different countries; 20 years in Greece before he came to England, Russia, as well as his native Poland. Zybi feels that there is a definite need for him to improve his English to enhance his job prospects. He is currently staying in Collyhurst with some Polish friends. The rest of his family, his 3 brothers and 3 sisters are living in Warrington.
Zybi has been a Painter and Decorator all his adult life and would like the opportunity to set up his own business. He has spent 1 year in Manchester working as a Painter and Decorator for a new hotel in the city. He enjoys going to the gym and fishing as well as learning English. During his time in the UK he has also enjoyed visiting different cities and has been to London, York, Liverpool, Blackpool and Sheffield. He can speak 4 different languages; Basic English, Russian, Greek and his native language Polish. He started with Manchester Academy of English 1 month ago and is really enjoying the free evening lessons provided at the academy.
Zybi is intrinsically motivated to learn English. He told me that he is very ambitious in achieving his learning goals. ‘Even where the original reason for taking up a language course, for example is extrinsic, the chances of success will be greatly enhanced if students come to love the learning process’ Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching pg 98.
Zybi told me that he prefers to learn English by speaking, writing, looking at pictures and working with the teacher but he does not like to watch the TV, films or read English books. I am inclined to think that Zybi is an active learner from this interview. This means that he engages in other activities as well as listening in the classroom. He takes part with discussions, reading and writing tasks etc.
Upon interviewing Zybi, I found that he has a problem with his vowel sounds, the vowel in ‘happy’. ‘and’, ‘family’ and also ‘Manchester’ seem to be pronounced [e], hence ‘heppy’, ‘end’, ‘femily’ and ‘menchester’ can be heard.
Zybi’s pronunciation of consonants as in the dental fricatives [th] in ‘brother’ and ‘that’ are mispronounced as in ‘brader’ and ‘det’ along with the wrong vowel sound. The initial consonants [sh] as in ‘show’ sounds as if it’s harder than the English pronunciation. This did not impede his communication skills however as I could understand exactly what he was telling me. Final consonants are pronounced wrongly also thus ‘and’ becomes ‘ent’ etc.
Zybi pronounced [r] whenever spelled as I asked him to read the email he had written to a friend out to me. This was not necessarily a big problem as his speech was made clear. For instance he pronounced the r at the end of ‘Manchester’, ‘Year’ and ‘Painter Decorator’ when in English this is not needed. However, when the ‘r’ is followed by a vowel sound in English it can be heard.
I noticed that Zybi’s word stress is fairly fixed on the last syllable of some longer words such as ‘Warrington’, since in Polish word stress is fairly fixed on the penultimate syllable and the final syllable of words.
In terms of lexis, Zybi gets the word ‘learn’ and ‘teach’ the wrong way round. When I interviewed him he said “My friend learns me English” instead of “My friend teaches me English”. In Polish there is a word for “teach” (uczyć), but the word for "learn" (uczyć się) could be interpreted as “teach oneself.” There are actually dialects of English where people do use “learn” like the example above, however this is not Standard English.
I noticed that from Zybi’s writing and speaking he drops the auxiliary verb in sentences that require one such as “I working as painter, decorator”, “I waiting for you to come here” and “I hoping that you are okay”. In Polish there are no auxiliary verbs but I think that the problem stems from contractions in English. It can be difficult to hear a native speaker say the auxiliary verb at all. A sentence with contraction can sound like “I am working, I’m working, I working”.
Conversational skills are a strength with Zybi. He was very inquisitive during the session and although I asked a lot of questions with him, he asked some of me. Through Zybi’s grammar and conversational skills I found that he does not like to end question sentences with prepositions. He asked me the question "From where are you coming? “The correct version is: "Where do you come from? “In Polish, you always put the preposition in front of the object it affects. But in English, in questions, you move the preposition to the end of the sentence. When I spoke, I made sure to use simple grammar in order to avoid mistakes.
Identifying language problems and providing suitable activities from published material.
An exercise I would choose for Zybi to improve his English in terms of remembering the auxiliary verb and would be an exercise from ‘Essential Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy, fourth edition’. A particular exercise in the book would give him practice with am/ is/are. This can be found in Unit 1 Exercise 1.2 gap fill exercise (See attached). This would engage him in using these auxiliary verbs and get him used to writing and speaking them
To help Zybi with his pronunciation of the ‘th’ sound as in brother which he pronounces as ‘d’, ‘brader’, he would definitely need some practice. I would introduce him to the ‘New Headway Pronunciation’ course book for Elementary speakers of English by Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moore pg. 23 Exercises 1-4. (See attached). These exercises will give him practice using the consonant and dental fricative of ‘th’ and get him to practice phrases and sentences with ‘th’ using the correct pronunciation. These are simple exercises and they would also get him used to elements of the phonemic alphabet.

Bibliography
Essential Grammar in Use- Raymond Murphy, fourth edition
New Headway Pronunciation course book for Elementary speakers of English- Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moore
The Practice of English Language Teaching- Jeremy Harmer

Bibliography: Essential Grammar in Use- Raymond Murphy, fourth edition New Headway Pronunciation course book for Elementary speakers of English- Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moore The Practice of English Language Teaching- Jeremy Harmer