Scribd
Upload
5K views

CELTA: Assignment Focus On The Learner

Dmitriy is a 21-year-old learner from Ukraine studying English and Spanish in Barcelona. His first language is Russian. He did not take English seriously in school. He enjoys speaking activities but struggles with listening, grammar, and questions. He makes many mistakes with tenses and uses grammar structures from his first language. However, he has strong vocabulary and pronunciation skills. The summary suggests providing grammar practice on tenses and questions as well as activities to improve his writing skills using full sentences.

Uploaded by

Karina Garosa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
5K views

CELTA: Assignment Focus On The Learner

Dmitriy is a 21-year-old learner from Ukraine studying English and Spanish in Barcelona. His first language is Russian. He did not take English seriously in school. He enjoys speaking activities but struggles with listening, grammar, and questions. He makes many mistakes with tenses and uses grammar structures from his first language. However, he has strong vocabulary and pronunciation skills. The summary suggests providing grammar practice on tenses and questions as well as activities to improve his writing skills using full sentences.

Uploaded by

Karina Garosa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Cambridge CELTA Written Assignment Assessment

1 of 4

Focus on the Learner


Karina H. R. Kopp
hand in date: 12/09/16

Learner:
Dmitriy Bondarenko
1: Learners background and learning experience of English
and their effects on learning
Dmitriy is 21 years old and came to Barcelona in April 2016. He is originally from
Ukraine, his mother tongue is Russian. He did his first English course here in April 2016.
He studied English in school but he didn't take it seriously. He is also studying Spanish
for two hours a day, which leaves him with 4 hours of language input everyday, which
has to be considered when teaching him. Often, he is tired in class and appears to be
lazy, but he might just not have much energy left at 7PM. He is young and extremely
cheeky, which makes him difficult to handle. He needs lots of attention so that he doesn't
get bored. It's hard to get a serious answer from him, he will try too hard to be funny with
everything he says. His morals and world views might differ significantly with the rest of
the class, including the teacher. His view on women and their rights (which is probably
part of his education) influence the way he respects (or disrespects) female teachers.
Sexual references aren't a rare thing with him.

2: Learners reasons/motivation/needs for learning English


Dmitriy wants to stay in Spain for the next couple of years. He would love to travel and
visit the United States (to meet some of his favourite celebrities, such as Rihanna and
Meagan Fox). He understands the need for learning the English language as a lingua
franca; in his words: People used to learn French, then Russian and German, English is
now. It is a necessity. He doesn't seem to be quite sure about his future job, so right
now he studies English for personal and communicative reasons.

3: Learning styles and strategies/ suggestions for classroom


He really enjoys speaking activities. He is aware of his pronunciation issues and likes to
practice speaking a lot, because it makes him more confident in the real world. He
prefers language exercises to skill tasks. Listening is really hard for him, and he can only
understand very little when he has to listen to a CD. When I talk to him in person
however, I feel like he understands instructions or just normal chats with no difficulty
whatsoever, so I am guessing he needs a lot of visual clues for understanding. What's
interesting about him is that he genuinely enjoys difficult activities and challenges.In fact,
he finds learning languages the most challenging in life, which is exactly why he likes
studying them.
For the classroom, I suggest a healthy balance of receptive and productive skill training.
He needs some grammar practice especially when it comes to correct tense forms. (See
5 for more detailed suggestions.)

Cambridge CELTA Written Assignment Assessment

2 of 4

Focus on the Learner


Karina H. R. Kopp

4: Learners strengths and weaknesses with language and skills


Language:
Grammar:
He struggles with grammar in general, compared to his other skills and language. His
weaknesses are especially tenses and questions. Because of his mother tongue
Russian, which is fundamentally different in its grammar, he very likely leaves out
important words, such as auxiliaries, verb endings, and especially pronouns. In Russian
there are only 3 tenses, so the logic and necessity behind it must be confusing for him.
At this level, he makes the most mistakes with continuous tenses. Furthermore, to build
full sentences is difficult for him, which often seems rude to other people, but this is a L1
grammar interference. The use of the to-infinitive is difficult for him, he uses it a lot when
he doesn't need to and vice versa. Sometimes, however, he uses complex structures
correctly, such as have to do something, something does not relate to something.

Two examples of errors:


1. Listen! The baby ____crying______ . (to cry)
2. Why do you want to learn English? - Was a question this. (Was this a question?
What kind of question is that?)
Lexis
His mental lexicon is impressive. He knows a lot of really advanced vocabulary that
learners at his level normally dont, he will use words like it's a necessity, to
accompany someone to do something, this does not relate to. As we see here, he
seems to be able to remember phrasal verbs, collocations and common expressions
very well. I haven't observed him using any of the common Russian-English false
friends, but he tends to use wrong expressions when he experiments with language.
Two examples:
1. - Fotball. Childhood Love. -> Here he tried to tell me that he has loved it since he
was a kid.
2. - Hardly one -> He does know at least 3 languages, so he can't have meant hardly.
Pronunciation
Again, his L1 explains his difficulties here. For example, he has problems with
differentiating between short and long vowels, which often leads to misunderstandings. I
think he would benefit from a lot of drilling and phoneme work. He improved his voiced
work endings a lot, which also used to be a problem. His intonation, rhythm and stress
however are surprisingly good, considering his L1. Most of his mispronunciations don't
effect his effective communication.
Two examples:
/wt kand v kwesnz z s/ when he says it it sounds more like:

/wat a kvesn s das/ -> He diphtongizes his vowels, mostly to match the
written word better, and finds it hard to pronounce a voiced and voiceless th.
He produces phonemes that aren't part of the English Phonetic Alphabet.

Cambridge CELTA Written Assignment Assessment

3 of 4

Focus on the Learner


Karina H. R. Kopp
Skills:
Reading:
He is good at silent reading but it's hard for him to concentrate on a lengthier task. He
enjoys it, but he like to talk about it afterwards. His reading out loud could be bit more
fluent.
Listening:
He doesn't enjoy listening because he doesn't understand people with different accents
so well, which is normal at his level. I think it lacks instant gratification for him.
Speaking:
He is very keen on speaking. He processes very quickly what is said to him in person
and he is very sharp-witted. His answers are hardly ever appropriate, he tries to make
fun of everything and everyone, which makes it harder for everyone in class.
Writing
He makes about the same amount of errors writing as speaking, which indicates that he
is not aware of his mistakes. He accepts and needs a lot of correcting here. He isn't
someone to use two words when one is enough. Therefore, I would suggest an activity
that targets his ability to write full sentences, preferably about someone/something else
than himself, because he does seem reluctant to share private information, but he
definitely needs the practice.

5: Activities to help the learner with their weak areas

Attached are some materials that could help this learner to further develop his language.
I chose Grammar: Tenses and Questions as a language activity, and an activity for
writing which he could benefit from.

Cambridge CELTA Written Assignment Assessment

4 of 4

Focus on the Learner


Karina H. R. Kopp

References:
Felder, R. M., and Soloman, B. A. (n.d.). LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES (Thesis,
North Carolina State University). North Carolina State University.
Swan, M., and Smith, B. (2001). Learner English: A teacher's guide to interference and
other problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tenses test:
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/download/test_tenses_en.pdf access date: 08.09.2016

Suggested material:
http://www.autoenglish.org/writing/w.famous.pdf
Gairns, R., and Redman, S. (1995). True to life: English for adult learners, preintermediate: Personal study workbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy