Analyze of an Oral Interview

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December 03, 2007

FLS 439 SEC601

Analyze of an Oral Interview

Yuily is a 23 year old from Russia. He is currently a student of aeronautical engineering at NC State and works as a TV salesman. He and his family are Jewish and were treated badly in Russia. Yuily came to the U.S. on November 17, 1985 when he was 11 years old. His first 5 years in America were spent in Brooklyn, NY. He lived in a community with a majority Russian immigrant population. During this time he learned to read, write and understand English but was not really interested learning to speak it. When he was 17 years old his parents moved to SC and put him in an all American school. That was when he was forced to learn English. Now Yuily is fluent in English, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, and Czechoslovakian.

Semantics

Yuily’s English is very good. He has an understanding of Semantics. He knows what his words mean when he uses them. He knows how to some common idiomatic phrases but struggles with others.

One thing I noticed right away was the idiomatic phrases he does not use correctly. One example is “…giving him a lot of hard times…” Although I understand what he meant, the correct phrase is, ”…giving him a hard time…” In this case he used the grammar rules he knows to construct a grammatically correct sentence.

The second thing I noticed was the use of uncommon words. For example, “…as me in gerneralwise…”. “As for me”, “in general”, and “otherwise” are all used to start a sentence. Here he combined several common phrases in order to open his sentence.

Yuily also has not quite grasped the use of vs. Properly used, the vs should come between the two things you are comparing. In our conversation he places the vs before the first item. “…vs European countries and American countries…”

Semantics are a hard thing to learn. A lot of the time it is something you must learn these from context and speaking with others. Listening and asking others what are meant by the idiomatic phrases could improve his use.

Syntax

Yuily has very good grammar. His simple present and simple future are correct an easily understood. He is also very careful with his progressive tenses but uses them extremely well.

He does have trouble with the simple past. Instead of changing the word have to make it past tense he adds did in front. For example, “…I did have base knowledge…” should be, “…I had basic knowledge…” He had a hard time changing the stems of words in order to change the tenses.

He also had a problem with using quantifiers. In, “…I was a lot further advanced…” the quantifier he uses is a lot instead of more. He also adds the word further as a quantifier but it is not supposed to be used in this sense.

I also noticed a few times he had a hard time with the phrase structure rules. There were occasions where he placed the noun after the verb or in the middle of a verb phrase. One example is, “…which did I not speak any English…” It is still understandable but not grammatically correct.

To improve these skills, I would suggest that he review the rules for tenses and slow down when he speaks. Because none of these problems are consistent, I feel as if slowing down would help his brain catch up to his mouth. This will stop many of the simple mistakes.

Morphology

The one thing I noticed that Yuily had an excellent grasp of was plurals. Many ESLs have trouble adding too many or incorrectly adding “s” to the ends of words. He did not. Even when he was using the wrong word or a wrong form the pluralization was always correct.

The first thing I noticed here was missing articles. There were several places in which an article was required that he did not use it. “…finished 5 year degree…” requires an article between the verb and the noun.

He also had a little trouble with derivational affixes. One example, “…one main differential…” Here he has taken a stem and added the wrong ending to change the meaning of the word. He wanted to say difference but with the –ential ending it has a different meaning to the whole sentence.

The other problem he had with morphology was with inflectional morphemes. Particularly he had trouble with the –ly ending. Although it does not change the word meaning it is used in correctly. For example, “…firstly came across…” showed be “first came across”.

I think it would benefit him to study the uses of these words and practice what they sound like when used properly. Like most things in learning a foreign language, practice makes perfect.