Written assignment 4

Beth Schiller

Focus on the Learner

I recorded two learners from my intermediate class, Jasmine and Anja. Both are young
German women attending a 5 week intensive English course.
Jasmin has had several years of school English that unfortunately were not memorable for her. She
told me she didnt like her teachers and they didnt like her. In spite of this I find her English quite fluent but
not very accurate. She shares the typical pronunciation problem with the individual phoneme O as most
German speakers. Examples are fadda, mudda, to da U.S.A. and we are dare. I would encourage Jasmine
to work in front of a mirror, position her tongue between her teeth, produce a sound with her vocal cords
and blow air through her tongue until she feels a buzz. After she had felt the physical sensation of this
phoneme she could go on to pronouncing a series of words like mother, father, brother, then, this in a chant
like repetition. I think if she did this exercise for several days she would be able to produce the sound
spontaneously in conversation. She also has trouble with the phoneme 6 as evident in her saying I sink so
and I write letters wis him. Again I would ask her to get the physical feeling first. She should hold her hand
in front of her mouth, position her tongue between her teeth and say the word think several times. She
would have to feel a puff of air on her hand to know she was producing the right sound. A repetition of
such words as thanks, thin, thanks and with could follow. I believe both of these problems are a matter of
accuracy and if someone taught her the method one needs to produce the sounds she would improve with
practice. She also has a problem with the individual phoneme n as in squashen, in-line skaten and
snowboarden. My 15 year old son tells me this is the way German kids pronounce these sports. They
simply Germanise the English. I would make Jasmine aware of the problem and teach her to use the
phoneme n. She could make a list of gerunds from the word field of sport and practice saying them. I have
to admit that if she were to go to America she would hear the kids saying lets go surfin or lets go bikin so
I dont know if it would be a big problem for her. Probably raising her awareness would be enough. Jasmine
has a tendency to give some words extra syllables like ev-en-ing or in-ter-est. I heard myself say in-ter-est
on the tape so she may have been parroting me. She would benefit with a list of words that she would have
to look up in a monolingual dictionary and note the number of syllables each word has. She could recite the
words the following week for an oral check. Jasmine makes mistakes with adverbs of frequency and
prepositions because she is translating from German. For example 3 times in a week or 2 times in the
month. I would give her a worksheet of How often? questions for written reinforcement. She also would
benefit with a worksheet titled When did you last? Questions as she makes mistakes like I saw them for 2
years. She needs to learn that we use a finished time + the simple past + ago. Her problem using the simple
past to talk about events in the past needs to be addressed. Perhaps she could listen to a short story (in the
past) on a tape, note all the verbs used, and then make up a story using those verbs. She would get the
aural benefit as well as the written benefit. I would give Jasmine a list of common verb/preposition
combinations like explain to (someone) and laugh at (someone or thing) to learn. She could write a few
meaningful sentences using them. As Jasmine seems to be going in the business direction in her future I
would suggest starting a word bank with translations for such words as Wirtschaft, Verwaltung and
Rechnungswesen. She could build it up as she progresses in her studies and work life. She made a mistake
with the plural uncountable noun trousers, saying trouser instead. I would give her a pack of picture cards
and she would have to make the corresponding word cards to bring to class for a game with the whole
class. As for her verb/noun collocation mistakes a big poster with a word map that she could hang in her
room at home would be a good idea. Having something passively around you can lead to more learning
than one thinks.
Anja needs work with minimal pairs. She is confusing man and men. She said we talk about the
life, women and mans. A tape of several minimal pairs would be great for her so she could practice hearing
and pronouncing the difference. She would have to tick what she hears and check with the tape. She has
trouble pronouncing -l in call and all. It is a German speaker problem. She could be given a diagram of the
mouth, shown how to place her tongue at the roof of her mouth and make a sound with her vocal cords. A
nice tongue twister might be fun for her as well. Anja pronounced children incorrectly and she also needs
work on irregular plurals like child/children and man/men so I would make a gap-fill work sheet for her.
This would give her written reinforcement. I would also give her a quick oral drill before or after a lesson.
Anja needs lots of work on using the present perfect tense with since and for. A written assignment asking
her to use meaningful information about herself would help when she was carrying on a conversation with

someone. She could write down important times and events in her life like I have been boxing for 4 years or
I have lived in Munich since 1990. By using her own information it would make the whole exercise more
relevent to her and perhaps she would remember the usage better. She confuses the word order of
sentences so certainly an exercise with jumbled words would benefit her. Anja makes mistakes with 3rd
person present simple negatives and the auxiliary verb do for example he dont like it. I would make her a
tape with my husband doesnt like.. and she could answer using her boyfriend as a model. Her use of
the article the in the life is probably a case of translating from German to English. She should be made
aware that we dont use the with uncountable nouns or plural nouns to talk about things in general i.e. the
whole of life. A gap-fill exercise where she has to decide if an article is needed would be appropriate I
would ask Anja to do the same listening and writing exercise as Jasmine to improve her use of the simple
past. Anjas vocabulary especially in the word field of sports could improve with a word spider or word
bank. Collocation mistakes like make my drivers license or make holiday could be addressed with the word
map idea or a gap-fill worksheet using words from a list.
I believe Anja and Jasmines problems are mainly grounded on accuracy as they are quite able to
carry on pleasant conversations. Their intonation is fine and I think they both have great opportunities in
their futures to improve their English.