Celta Assignment 2: Focus on the Learner
For this assignment, I interviewed Ibrahim A Rabie, a 46-year-old Sudanese student from my intermediate class. Ibrahim works night shifts as a security guard in west London and spends most of the day recovering from the long twelve hour shifts. Ibrahim’s first language is Arabic which he speaks at home with his wife. He came to England to live with her in 2007 and has been studying English on and off for the last year and a half. Ibrahim completed a law degree in Morocco when he was 26 and now wants to improve his English language skills so he can communicate with ease, and seek legal work internationally in English speaking countries.
Ibrahim says he prefers to learn by looking at pictures and Q&A with a teacher, he does not like asking other students for help. With the help of a VARK questionnaire (http://www.vark-learn.com) we found the results were similar to his opinions. He scored high for V (visual), medium for A (audio/aural), low in R (read/writing) and high for K (Kinaesthetic). The results from the questionnaire show that he learns best by speaking, visualizing and hearing the language, as opposed to reading and writing based activities.
During the lessons I observed the interaction Ibrahim has with his fellow classmates. He is not very confident but tries to engage in exercises and is not shy during group and pair tasks. He is hesitant to speak out by himself especially when a teacher nominates him for feedback. He struggles to express his answers when he is put on the spot in front of the class, due to his lack of English vocabulary. Despite this he still tries to engage in class feedback and shouts out his answers to questions when a teacher is eliciting the class.
Ibrahim admits he is not good with English grammar. I noticed a lack of correct use of definite and indefinite articles and observed that he missed out prepositions which led to disjointed and clumsy sentences. This is