Assignment: FOCUS ON THE LEARNER

AIMS

To develop your ability to assess the needs of a learner and to act on this information by finding appropriate material for language support.

WORD LIMIT: 750-1000 words

Choose a student from your TP class and write a profile of this individual, commenting briefly on the following areas:

Background (about 200-250 words):

  • Nationality and mother tongue
  • Linguistic level and ability
  • Motivation for learning English
  • Language needs (e.g. will speaking and listening be more important than reading and writing, or do they need to pass an entrance exam for university?)
  • Learning styles and preferences both from your questionnaire and noted by you in teaching practice.
  • The student’s previous experience of learning English (how long / method of study).

This information should be obtained during a recorded interview, a short writing task (e.g. a reply to a pen friend letter from you – see example) and observation of the student during teaching practice.

Performance:

Using the information collected above

i)Skills - Comment on their abilities in at least two of the four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing). State their strengths and/or weaknesses in the skills, and where possible give an example from a lesson or the interview to support your comments (about 100 - 150 words).

ii)Grammar – Note down the mistakes you’ve identified related to grammar, e.g. present perfect versus past simple, and select 1 area to focus on. NB avoid trying to cover too much – imagine you had a 40 minute lesson for the grammar point.

iii)Pronunciation - Note down the mistakes you’ve identified related to pronunciation (specific sounds, word stress, sentence stress, intonation etc.), using the phonemic transcription where relevant. Select 1 area to focus on.

  • The areas selected in ii) and iii) should be systematic errors, so you need to have noted at least 2 examples of the same type of error
  • Provide the correction and if possible a linguistic term for each error, e.g. not using the irregular past participle
  • say why you think the student made the error, e.g. L1 interference

For each area in ii) & iii) above suggest 1 activity or resource that for clarificationor practice of the area.Justify your choice with reference to the student’s learning styles and preferences. Include a sourced copy of each one of these with your assignment. At least one of the activities or resources needs to be web-based

See Learner English by M Swan

POTENTIAL PITFALLS

  • Providing irrelevant personal information about the student, and not providing sufficient background information about the student's previous experience of learning English or learning style/preferences
  • Trying to cover too much, e.g. all uses of articles
  • Selecting material which would not help with the problem area you selected.
  • Providing more than one piece of material for each area selected
  • Choosing material which is too high a level for the learner ornot appropriate for their level, e.g. helping an upper int student with present simple
  • Misidentifying the errors the learner has made
  • Not giving the rationale for your choice of material linked to your learner
  • Not attaching correctly sourced material

Assessment criteria:

  • showing awareness of how learners‘ backgrounds, previous learning experience and learning styles affect learning
  • identifying the learners‘ language/skills needs
  • correctly using terminology relating to the description of language systems and language skills
  • selection appropriate material and/or resources to aid the learners‘ language development
  • providing rationale for using specific activities with learners
  • finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources
  • using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

(Taken from the assessment criteria in the CELTA syllabus)

EXAMPLE PEN-FRIEND LETTER

Dear ….

I'm writing to tell you something about me and I'd like you to write back and tell me something about you and your life.

I'm married, but I don't have any children. I live in Marlow, which is a village on the River Thames. I'm a teacher of English and my husband's a maths teacher. Before I got married, I lived in Reading and worked at the university. I had two cats, which I loved, but they died a few years ago.

In my free time I love cooking, eating, reading, going to the cinema and painting, but I'm not very good at it. I also grow my own vegetables and make my own bread, without a breadmaker! For my holidays I like to go somewhere different each year. At Christmas, we went to Cuba. There's so much to see there and fortunately the weather was very good.

In the future I’d like to learn another language, maybe Chinese. I'm also hoping to work somewhere different next summer. Two years ago I worked in Prague and loved it. It was a really interesting city and the people were very friendly.

Anyway, that's a little about me. Can you write back and tell me about your life, hobbies, last holiday, future plans etc.?

Yours,

….