Universidad Catlica De la Santsima Concepcin

Language Learner Profile

Names: Claudia Parra

Daniela Rodrguez
Guido Riquelme
Date: October 7th, 2014

Language learning strategies framework.

The audio-lingual method (ALM) was ground-breaking in its day for, it gave more
importance to listening and speaking skill than to reading and writing. However,
nowadays practicing speaking in the classroom means repeating after the teacher,
reciting memorized dialogues, and practicing constructed but rather mechanical
pronunciation and grammar drills. Learners had few opportunities to use the language
for expressing in authentic situations.
ALM had many successors, which encouraged more meaningful use of the target
language and more opportunities for learners to use the language creatively. Other
successors have proclaimed themselves to be "communicative" approaches. However,
even under these approaches, there are no such opportunities for real communication.
(Burkart, 1998)
The importance of teaching speaking in a class can be linked to the ability to process
the language rapidly. The idea is that they can generate an idea in their brains and then
express it in a coherent way, minding the structures and possible contexts in which this
idea is presented.
According to Douglas Brown, speaking and listening are considered oral communicative
skills. Thats why usually they are taught together in listening/speaking courses. (As
Brown exemplifies, conversations are a good example of the typical performances of
oral communicative skills) Besides, is recommendable to be conscious that we as
teachers must teach this skill in order to the student be able to achieve a successful
communicational performance. The benchmark of successful language acquisition is

almost always the demonstration of an ability to accomplish pragmatic goals through

interactive discourse with other speaker of the language. (Douglas Brown, 2000)
As the other skills, the process of teaching speaking, also have some complications
such as clustering, reduced forms, colloquial language, stress, rhythm and intonation.
As brown points, having in mind these issues would facilitate the process of learning
speaking properly. Nevertheless, it exist an issue that overwhelm adults L2 learners,
pronunciation. According to the author, adult learners will never achieve an accent-free
L2. Fluency and accuracy in spoken language are other issue on teaching speaking.
The issue is which one is more important; fluency, speaking with a natural rhythm but
probably the listener wouldnt be able to understand, or accuracy, the speaker have an
excellent domain of grammar, vocabulary, etc; but the speaker at the moment of
speaking, speaks word by word unnaturally. We believe that when teaching speaking
both, fluency and accuracy, should be taught inside the classroom.

Learners Background.
Daniela Miranda is a student from Centro de Estudio La Araucana in Concepcin. She
coursing 3rd and 4th medio. She has been studying English since she was 5 years old,
when she was in kinder garden. She believes that English is a very important tool, useful
at the moment of traveling or if someone wants to go abroad. Also, she knows that
English will be very important on her career, as she wants to study engineering. When
asked about the access to books she tells us that she has many book in her house, yet
she was not fond of reading. But she like to listen music in English.
When asked about the focus that English is given on her school, she tells us that writing
is given more importance at the moment of teaching and learning, but she thinks that
speaking and listening are more important at the moment of developing skills.
Finally, she recognizes that she likes English, but she has problems with tenses at the
moment of learning and using English to communicate with others.

Interview transcription:
Interviewer: Could you introduce yourself?
Daniela: My name is Daniela Miranda... I am eighteen years old.
I: Where do you live?
D: I live in Concepcion Since ninety ninety nineteen ninety-six.
I: What do you want to study?
D: (The interviewee did not understood the question the first time) What do you want
to study? (Hesitates)
I: Ok. What do you want to study?
D: I wants study engineering (mispronunciation) in University of Concepcion o
Concepcion University.
I: Ok. What sports do you like, if you like any sport? And why?
D: I like practice yoga and body-combat are my favorite sports, because I relax do it this.
I: Ok. What kind of music do you like? And why?
D: The kind of music?
I: The kind.
D: Could (missing subject) be Britney Spears. I love, I love it.
I: Do you like pop, pop music?
D: Pop music. I love all the music in pop.
I: And why? Why do you like pop music?
D: Because (missing subject) is fun, (missing subject) is funny. And I can I can
dance with this.
I: Finally. If you won the lottery, on what will you spend it? And why?
D: MM...I would help people and animals, because I like. (Missing subject)
I: Thank you Daniela.

Analysis
In the present interview is easy to notice the lack of fluency from the interviewees
speech, due to her nervous, as long as the interview develops hesitations were
constant, especially when the interviewee was not sure of certain words or numbers,
which occur in some questions where hesitations were predominant due to the lack of
vocabulary.
During the interview there were several verb tense mistakes, such as the use of final s,
when first person singular is used, which is a basic mistake, nevertheless the
interviewee does not manage this grammatical rule, which is shown when she says: I
Wants study
Another grammatical mistake that is presents during the interview is related with the use
of the simple present and the present continuous. The interviewee does not distinguish
when she has to use both tenses, so she use present simple instead of present
continuous, an example for that is when she mentions: I relax do it this.
A repeated mistake appears in the interview which is the non-use of the subject It
when starting a new sentence: Because is fun is funny that reaffirm that the
interviewee does not manage some grammatical structures.
Throughout the conversation, few pronunciations mistakes are made, the interviewee
presents only a stress mistake with the word: engineering, which is mispronunciation
she says: (/endnr/ instead of /endnr/).

Finally in the conversation there is a clear L1 interference that it is an issue in terms of

structure. The interviewee uses structures that belong to the Spanish language, and that
cannot be used in English. I love all the music in pop.

Conclusions.
As it was expressed in the framework, nowadays teachers tend to the practice in which
they over use repetition, as a fashion for students to memorize content, even without
being meaningful. We do believe in giving students the opportunity were they could talk
and use the language in authentic situations. And how our interviewee expressed, she
was not given the opportunity whatsoever.
The proficiency level of our interviewee makes us believe that if she is constant, she will
overcome easily her language problems, such as grammar mistakes and pronunciation,
which must be said were not significant. Also it is important to highlight, that the
proficiency level of our interviewee is directly related with the age she started to study
English.

References.

Brown, H. D. (2000). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Aproach to Language

Pedagogy (2 ed.). San Francisco, California: Longman.
Burkart, G. S. (1998). Spoken Language: What It Is and How To Teach It. Washington,
DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Harmer, J. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching (3 ed.). Cambridge, UK:
Longman.