Focus on the Learner

Student background and motivation for learning English

Mumtaz Ahmad

The student I am focusing on is a 25 year old boy from Libya. He has been living in Libya his whole life and came to this country to learn English. He has been in this country for the last 11 months. He works for the Local Government in Libya and said due to recent developments in Libya, the country is opening up its trade relations with the rest of the world and English is a necessity to be able to communicate with other people from other countries. He said that English is a national language and without good English skills he cannot carry out his work effectively. He said that in Libya he was taught some English at school, however this was never practiced. In this country the student is living with an English host family. He has to communicate with them in English therefore his spoken English is improving quite well as he has no choice but to speak English with his host family. His motivation for learning English is for his work duties and he has an ambition to go to America to study for a Masters and he wants to improve his English before he starts his Masters degree. He also said it is necessary to learn and to be able to communicate in English as it is needed everywhere these days and he feels it is a skill for life. from other countries to help him with his work.

Students individual learning style

From my observation of this student, he enjoys visual learning. He enjoys learning in a practical way. The student enjoys learning English using the inductive approach. From observing the student I noticed that he uses a dictionary to look up the meaning of words. This helps him to understand the overall meaning of the sentence. This student is an active learner and enjoys practical activities more than written or grammar work. He is confident at talking even though gets his sentence structure wrong, he can make himself understood.

Focus on the Learner

Specific Linguistic Problems

Mumtaz Ahmad

1. Grammar
The student said that the area he finds most difficult about learning English is learning grammar. He has difficulty getting his grammar correct. He said that he doesnt like grammar and that it gives him problems. He finds it difficult to understand and implement grammar rules. He said that when he wants to talk about something that may have happened yesterday he finds it hard to explain what he wants to talk about. He said that he finds tenses difficult such as past, present and future tenses. Im a single no marrid (This should say I am single, not married) An article is inserted in this sentence when it doesnt belong there, and married is spelt wrong.

Solutions to this problem

I would recommend this student looks at this website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/sentence-grammar.

I think this will be fantastic resource for this student as he has difficulty with the use of present simple, present continuous for present and future, past simple, past continuous and
future simple. This website has short video clips about how to identify nouns, verbs,

adjectives, adverbs, connectives, pronouns and prepositions. How to use nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, connectives, pronouns and prepositions. This website also helps with capital letters, full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, commas and apostrophes. This website has fun games and different levels of learning starting from entry level and going up to level 2. If this student went through this website and completed the levels then his understanding of grammar would increase.

Focus on the Learner

Mumtaz Ahmad

2. Writing
I asked this student to write a short letter to me giving me a brief background of history where he is from and why he wants to learn English. The content of the letter is clear and the letter can be understood, however there are many spelling mistakes and punctuation errors. Capital letters are in the wrong place and full stops and commas are not in correct places. A few examples of the errors the student made are: I am leave in Libya with my family, (This should be I live in Libya with my family) The wrong spelling here has potentially changed the whole meaning of the sentence. It could easily be read as (I have left Libya with my family). The verb can change the whole meaning of a sentence. I am works in Govirment in Tripoli Libya ( This should say I work for the Government in |Tripoli, Libya) From this piece of writing it is clear to see what the student is meant to be writing. The gist of the meaning can be understood.

Suggestions for improvement

To help the learner I would suggest that the learner visits this website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/writing This website has some fantastic resources which would help this learner to improve his writing skills and his sentence structure. This website has activities on:

Capital letters The use of subject and verb Full stops Conjunctions Adjectives Sentence punctuation

Focus on the Learner

Mumtaz Ahmad

This website has short one minute videos on how to improve your writing and also this website has lots of practical tasks that can be completed to help improve your writing. I think this website would benefit this student a great deal as he is a visual and practical learner and this website incorporates both of those. I have attached a sheet to the end of this report which has been printed from that website.

3. Speaking
His sentences are not phrased correctly. For example he said that he said that I lives with women and dogs and he should have said that I live with a woman who has a few dogs. These mistakes don't cause too much difficulty in being understood though. As long as the word/s that is said incorrectly is in a sentence to give it context, it's fine. In the Arabic language adjectives follow the noun.

Suggestions for improvement Organising discussion classes would be beneficial where the teacher and the learners talk together. In the book Learning Teaching MACMILLAN by (Scrivener (2005)) page 146, the books talks about teaching speaking techniques where the students get together and talk. This gives learners the opportunity to become more fluent and confident. These exercises are based on Scriveners theory that a learner can start to learn to speak English by speaking English or having regular discussion classes.

Focus on the Learner

4. Pronunciation

Mumtaz Ahmad

This student has difficulty with some of the letters such as P and th. The students Ps are pronounced as B and the Th is pronounced as Z . This students speaking is up to a level where he can make himself understood, however he does make errors in more or less every sentence. He gets the word order the wrong way round and he has problems differentiating his Ps and Bs. He will pronounce people as beeble.

Suggestions for improvement

I would suggest this student gets a good dictionary which has the phonemic alphabet to get a better understanding how a word is pronounced. There are also many web sites available to help with pronunciation. This website is a good resource to help with pronunciation and it also has information about word stress and explains how the stress in a sentence can change the meaning of the sentence. http://esl.about.com/od/pronunciationtechniques/Pronunciation_Techniques.htm

Another method that I think would benefit this student is from the book The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer (Pearson Longman) pages 223 & 224. This book illustrates a grammar game which can be played. These games can be tailored for this students level and this should engage him and encourage him to use target structures with enthusiasm. I think this type of learning would be more beneficial to this student rather than text book tasks because this learner is a practical learner who enjoys learning in an active way.