CELTA Written Assignment 1: Focus on the Learner

Part 1: Background

The students attending the intermediate English language course at Language Link are a monolingual (Russian) class of 9 adults (8 women and 1 man). Their average age is about 25 years. All of them have some prior knowledge of the English language (studied it at school as part of the compulsory curriculum). However, there are only 3-4 strong students, others being of average or weak abilities.

Their motivation to study English is either of personal (intrinsic) nature (e.g. travel) or extrinsic (e.g. to get promotion at work). During lessons all of them claimed several times that they love travelling (this was one of the most interesting topics for them to discuss), so this means that speaking should be the most important skill to develop.

As for learning styles it’s hard to distinguish any certain style for the whole group. Most of them are a mix of visual and auditory. Some of them claimed that it was easy for them to use their “visual memory”. The number of students and the size of the room made it difficult to have a more kinaesthetic approach though the Ss seem to like different mingling activities.

Due to the Russian system of education all of them prefer to be taught rather than actively participate in the learning process. From time to time they found easier to translate a word than to explain. Some students were not really involved and didn’t even ask questions, which shows the lack of confidence in them. This class needs some time to tune in, but they’re very active by the end of the lesson, especially when doing speaking activities.

During the interviews we had with them on our first day of training most of them stated speaking to be one of the most difficult areas, as well as listening. However, listening appeared to be no problem for them. Reading was also easy for them as they could successfully fulfill all the tasks. Speaking, on the contrary, was difficult either because of poor vocabulary, or because of shyness and fear to make a mistake. Some writing assignments revealed that they make a lot of spelling mistakes which definitely need to be corrected.

Part 2: Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the strongest students in the group was no doubt Roman. Here are some examples of his successful language use:

When discussing the differences between the use of Present Simple and Present Continuous tenses his was very fluent: “ I’m staying with my uncle while my parents are away”. Another good example is with the use of “memory” verbs: “He reminds me to do things”. Speaking about phonology, I would like to mention that Roman was successful with the following tongue twister: “Thirty free flowers for three lucky thieves”, thus showing no problems with the trickiest for Russian speakers sounds /T/ and /f/.

However, not everything was perfect in his speech, there still occurred some errors. Some of them were just slips, some were caused by the interference of L1, others were errors caused by the lack of systematic knowledge.

Error	Should be	Error type	Possible reason for the error
He is enjoying the course?	Is he enjoying the course?	Grammar	The student doesn’t know how to form questions, he’s not very fluent with the use of auxiliaries. Possibly, it’s because in Russian there’s neither inversion, nor auxiliaries in questions.
I used to fear dogs	I used to be afraid of dogs	Vocabulary	The wrong use of semantically close noun and verb
Useless /ju:zles/	Useless /ju:sless/	Pronunciation	Confusion between a verb “use” /ju:z/ and a noun “use” /ju:s/. I think it was just a slip of the tongue.

Part 3: Helping the learner

I decided to focus on the problem of forming questions, which seems to be quite systematic in not only Roman’s speech, but usual for most Russian speakers. There are two activities chosen (see App 1&2). First is from “English Grammar in Use, intermediate”, 3^rd edition, by Raymond Murphy. The aims are to provide the student with appropriate model of forming question in the English language and to practise the TL. Rationale: The following worksheets provide students with a rule as well as give them opportunity to drill it, therefore to remember it. In the classroom I would highlight the problem area, elicited the error on WB (asked Ss to explain why it is wrong to say “He is enjoying the course?”). Then I would give out the worksheets and ask them to do the exercises.

So far as this error mostly occurs in oral speech, there must be speaking exercise (App 2), which is designed on the basis of ex. 2a,p.11 in New Cutting Edge Intermediate. Students work in pairs. First, they have to complete the questions, then - ask their partner. They also have the opportunity to check their partner, as they have correct beginning of their partner’s questions.­ Aim: to enable Ss to use the TL. Rationale: According to the communicative approach it’s necessary to have speaking practice of any rule studied in the classroom.

Another problem which I consider to be quite urgent is the phonological one (confusion between a verb “use” /ju:z/ and a noun “use” /ju:s/). In the book “English pronunciation in use, Intermediate” there is a perfect exercise (see App.3). As to the procedure, I would first emphasize the difference between the forms, highlighting that these are different parts of speech (use/ju:z/ = verb and use /ju:s/= noun). Some drilling is also possible. The difference between the sounds /s/ and /z/ also must be emphasized. After that I would ask Ss to do the exercise in App 3. Aim: to enable Ss to practise the sounds in question and to highlight how these sounds can change the meaning of a word. Rationale: So far as the activity has some listening tasks, it provides Ss with an opportunity to hear the difference and have a perfect model.

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