Language Learner

Profile

Names: Valentina Acua Z.

Alexa Reichelt B.
Teacher: Roxanna Correa P.

Concepcin, June 14th 2016

INDEX
1

PAGE
1. INTRODUCTION

2. METHODOLOGY

2.1. Learners Background

2.2. Instruments

2.2.1. Background Questionnaire

2.2.2. Interview (Tasks)

2.2.2.1. Interview Transcription

2.2.3. Procedure
3. DATA ANALYSIS

5
6
7

3.1. General Analysis

3.2. Phonetics and Phonology

3.2.1. Selected Extract Lines 19, 20, 21

3.2.2. Phonetic Transcription Lines 19, 20, 21

3.2.3. Analysis and Examples

3.2.3.1. Analysis
3.3. Lexical Analysis

9
12

4. PROPOSED TREATMENT AND REMEDIATION

14

5. CONCLUSIONS

15

6. REFERENCES

16

1. INTRODUCTION

It is well known that there is an immense diversity of what we call methodologies in

different areas of studying and also in learning a second language. However, can we
2

absolutely understand how important is being able to develop the skills of a certain
dialect?
Certainly, nowadays it is much easier to acquire a second language than in the past
years. This interview, which is called Language Learning Profile, is going to be
used for presenting a complete and detailed analysis of how an individual is capable
of speaking in English as an L2. However, trying to speak a different language could
always bring many difficulties. Furthermore, this investigation could be hugely
significant to any future teacher of English, who would like to understand for
instance, how a learners brain works when processing an answer in an idiom which
is completely distant from his/her mother tongue.
For developing our analysis, we selected a first year English pedagogy student from
Universidad de las Amricas since his level of proficiency and accuracy in English
might be basic so it could help us in the study of any linguistic brunches such as
Lexis and Phonetics and Phonology.

2. METHODOLOGY

2.1.

Learners Background:
The person who was interviewed has 18 years old and lives in Talcahuano,
Concepcin. During his learning process at primary school, he had English classes
since 5th grade with two hours per week. In addition, he mentioned that he was not
3

satisfied with his primary English classes and he noticed that the gap between
private schools and public schools is huge.
When he was on secondary school, he moved from his primary school to another
institution for high school. Moreover, he said that he liked English at high school but
he did not care about paying attention during the lessons. He also remembered that
the listening skill was developed more deeply than the other skills in the classes.
Currently, he is a first year student of English pedagogy at UDLA (Universidad de las
Amricas).
During the interview, he explained that even if he does not feel a hundred percent
comfortable when speaking in English, he decided to study this major not only
because he wants to improve his level and feel more comfortable, but also because
he loves to teach.
2.2. Instruments:
2.2.1. Background questionnaire
First, in the interview about his background, we asked four personal questions in
English, which were related to his personal information, his life and his interests.
Given the fact that he is an English student we asked him about which skill he feels
more comfortable with. Later, we asked him seven questions in Spanish to know his
relationship with the English language in High School. The purpose of these
questions were to make him produce answers as expand as possible, so we could
be able to develop a better analysis.
In order to avoid confusion because of the switch from Spanish to English, we made
this section of the interview after the first part which was in English.
The learner described that learning the English language made a huge impact on
him. Since he was a child, he loved write stories, listening to songs and watching
different movies in the second language. In High school the subject was not difficult
for him because he had the basic vocabulary to understand the context of the
English units. These aspects mentioned previously are relevant on the learner
language acquisition because it reveals the relationship between his background and
his current level of English, which will allow us to give him some advices in order to
improve.
4

2.2.2. Interview (Tasks)

Before asking the background questions in Spanish, we made six questions which
were focused on his interests, holidays and personal information. The main objective
of these questions was to make him speak in the targeted language for at least 30
seconds so it could be used for analyzing his performance when speaking; hence,
this part was developed in English from both sides the interviewee and the
interviewer
This was the most important part of the whole interview since from the answers he
produced we were going to extract some issues we could find related to vocabulary
and also pronunciation.

2.2.2.1.

Interview Transcription
A: Interviewer
B: Interviewee
Lines

A: Do you like english? Why?

B: I like english because is so fun. I mean you can... eeh learn on the

accent in the culture,

is and if you if you apply for a job, there gone

there gone to ask you if you know any english. But, thats why is so

4
5

Important.

A: What did you do on your last vacations and who did you go with?

B: I go to La Serena eeh... with my girlfriend. And... we have so much

fun because emm is really beautiful there. But she dont like emm...

eeh the, the heat, so it was hard for her.

A: Where do you want to go on this holidays and why?

10

B: Me and my girlfriend want to go to... eeh temuco, because we like eeh

11

rain and we like emm.. humedad? humedad, no se como se dice. Y and..

12

we also want to go to emm.. Lautaro, that is closer to Temuco.

13

A: So youre going to go in your winter vacations?

14

B: Winter vacations.

15

A: How do you do to arrive to the University everyday?

16

B: I go to the university by taking the bus. One bus.

17

A: What is you favourite movie? why? and what it is about?

18

B: My favourite movie is American psycho, because is a.. I like eeh.. terror

19

movies. Emm and I like see eeh.. because it have amm.. psychological

20

eeh.. trasfondo? eeh.. Is about a.. business man, but is.. that goes crazy.

21

A: What do you like the most about your life?

22

B: Emm... what I like the most about my life is the relation that I have with

23

my girlfriend. Because shes so tender and so... amazing and she she

24

thinks the same things the.. than me.

25

A: Which of the four english skills is the easiest for you?

26

B: The.. I think is writing. Because I like eeh writing emm.. stories and

27

songs, eeh so when Im alone, is easy for me to write. aah.. I write in

28

spanish eeh... but now Im.. Im trying to write in english.

29

2.2.3. Procedures:
6

Firstly, we had chosen an English pedagogy first year student from Universidad
Catlica de la Santsima Concepcin. However, after meeting the interviewee, which
took place on one of the study room on the Education Faculty of the UCSC, we
noticed that her answers were too short and there was not enough information and
words that could be analyzed. Nonetheless, we remembered that one of us had a
friend who studies the same major as the learner that we had previously chosen.
Consequently, we finally selected a different person from a different University in
order to compare a freshmen level from our University to one from another
University.
Once we agreed to meet with the learner, we started by explaining him all the
questions and the aim of the interview. Furthermore, we recorded the questions in
one of the universitys study rooms. Next, we constantly had some drawbacks
recording the interview. Therefore, we decided to record the interview question by
question and it generated us more comfort as we were able to analyze the questions
individually. The recording duration was around 10 minutes.
At the same day we started transcribing the interview, and immediately, while we
were listening, we were finding mistakes which could be useful for our analysis. After
half an hour, we transcribed the whole interview and decided which errors we were
going to give importance in this study.
3. DATA ANALYSIS

3.1.

General Analysis:
During the process of analysis, we found out that our questions might have been
difficult for our learner to answer on an expand manner. Still, he could give us a
satisfied and comprehensible speech to analyze. He presented mostly a basic use of
vocabulary and a lack of connectors in every reply.

Furthermore, he showed

pronunciation and fluency issues which might cause complications to interpret his
answers on the way that he wanted to. Besides, the learner seemed to be focused
on the interview.
Overall, the most repeated problem that our learner presented in every response
was the use of fillers which prevented him from producing a connected and fluent
speech.
7

3.2.

Phonetics and Phonology

3.2.1. Selected Extract Lines 19, 20, 21

My favourite movie is American psycho, because is a.. I like eeh.. terror
movies. Emm and I like see eeh.. because it have amm.. psychological
eeh.. trasfondo? eeh.. Is about a.. business man, but is.. that goes crazy.
3.2.2. Phonetic Transcription Lines 19, 20, 21
/ma fevrt muv s mericn sak/ bks s lk eeh.. terr
muvz emm.. nd a lak s: eeh.. bks t hv amm.. skldkl
eeh.. trasfondo? eeh.. s bat ..bznes men, bt s.. at g us kre z/

3.2.3. Analysis and Examples

Word

Learners
Pronunciation

British
Pronunciation

Number of
Line

Culture

/kltr/

/klt/

To

/tu/

/tu/

Because

/bks/

/bkz/

Heat

/ht/

/hit/

Terror

/teror/

/tr/

19

Psychological

/skldkl/

/sakldkl/

20

Stories

/estrs/

/strz/

27

Easy

/s/

/iz/

28
8

/tran/

Trying

3.2.3.1.

/tra/

29

Analysis
The phonetical issues that we found during the analysis were mostly due to a L1
influence and also because he has not had a formal teaching of phonetics so he was
not aware of the sounds that are present in English but not in Spanish.
For Spanish speakers there are five vowels in the vowel chart: /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/
(Salcedo, 2010). Nonetheless, in English there are twelve vowels; hence, for a native
Spanish speaker it is not easy to become aware of the different pronunciation of all
these vowels. For instance, in English it is introduced the concepts of long and short
vowels which are not familiar for learners (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010).
We think that this difference between Spanish and English vowels might be the
cause of the mispronunciation of the student.

1.

Examples
Word: culture

Explanation
In this case, as the student is not aware of the

Student: /kltr/

production of the phoneme //, we think he made the

BrE: /

most similar sound which is //.

klt/
2.

Word: to

In this case, the concept short and long vowels are

Student: /t/

present, because the word to is pronounced with the

BrE: /tu/

long /u:/, but we think that he related the sound to his

previous knowledge about vowels in Spanish and
produced a short // because it is the most similar to
the one he knows.

3.
-

a.- Word: heat

As in the previous case, here we found that the

Student: /ht/

learner produced a short // because is the most

BrE: /hit/

similar to the Spanish vowel and also, because he

has not acquire these concepts.

b.- Word: easy

9

Student: /s/
BrE: /iz/

In the English language, there is a vowel which is considered the most important
sound in English known as schwa (//) (BBC, 2014). However, in Spanish there are
only five vowels and none of these is this sound, so we believe that he
pronounced // because he is not aware of the phoneme // since it is difficult to
recognize and produce it.
Example
Word: terror
Student: /terr/
BrE: /tr/
The following examples show a mispronunciation of the phoneme /z/ replacing it by
the phoneme /s/. We consider that this happens because, even though Spaniards
still make a distinction between both sounds, in the Spanish spoken in Chile there is
no difference between the consonants s and z when pronouncing them (Fras,
2001). Therefore, we think that he uses the /s/ sound instead of the /z/ one.
Examples
1.-

3.-

Word: because

2.-

Word: easy

Student: /bks/

Student: /s/

BrE: /bkz/

BrE: /iz/

Word: stories

In this example we think he connected the sound

Student: /estrs/

for plurality in Spanish to the plurality that he

BrE: /strz/

wanted to produce in English.

Moreover, in this word he added the phoneme /e/
10

since

in

Spanish

this

consonant-consonant

structure is not commonly used for beginning a

word, so

we

think he was

unconsciously

influenced by his L1.

As Rasekhi concluded on her investigation about the needs of ESL/EFL learners
(2008), Spanish speakers most common problems when speaking English are
related to the influence of L1 on L2. In the following example we think that as the
English spelling is similar to the Spanish spelling he produced the word according to
the Spanish pronunciation.

Examples
English
Word: psychological
Student: /skldkl/

Spanish
Word: psicolgico
Pronunciation: /siko'loxiko/

BrE: /sakldkl/
In the next situation, we believe that as the student has not had phonetics and
phonology teaching he is not aware of the distinction that exists between the English
phonemes // and /n/ (BBC, 2014). Therefore, as he still does not know the alveolar
phoneme, he pronounces the sound that he already knows from his L1.
Example:
Word: trying
Student: /tran/
BrE: /tra/
Finally, there is a mispronunciation in the lines 3 and 4 because, according to the
context, we think he was trying to say theyre going to, but due to the lack of
pronunciation training he did not pronounce the phoneme // nor //. Thus, what we
understood was there gone.
11

What the student said.

Extract: there gone to ask you
Pronunciation: /er gn t ask ju:/

Example
What we think he was trying to say.
theyre going to ask you
Pronunciation: / e g t
sk ju/

3.3.

Lexical Analysis
During the analysis, we found several mistakes related to vocabulary, and for
explaining them we used different authors, such as Romero-Trillo (2008),
Schreuder & Weltens (1993) and Hornby (2000).

Line

Answer

Analysis

2, 3,
4, 5

I like english because is so fun. I mean

In this answer, we found a wrong choice of

you can.. eeh learn on the accent in

the conjunction. He used the word but

the culture,

which by definition introduces a contrast

is and if you if you

apply for a job, there gone there gone

between

two

to ask you if you know any english. But,

Nonetheless, the learner is expressing the

thats why is so important.

reasons

why

ideas
he

(Hornby,

thinks

2000).

English

is

important, so he should have used a

proper word for concluding the idea. For
instance, he could have used, because of
that, so, etc.

7, 8,
9

I go to La Serena eeh... with my

In this example, we have addition of fillers

girlfriend. And... we have so much fun

because of a hesitation issue. Furthermore,

because emm is really beautiful

this problem occurs when the speaker's

there. But she dont like emm... eeh the,

attention is concentrated on the content of

12

the heat, so it was hard for her.

ones speech (what to say next) rather than

on its form of the speech. (Romero-Trillo,
2008)

11,
12,
13.

Me and my girlfriend want to go to...

(a) In this case, we are in presence of an

eeh temuco, because we like eeh... rain

issue that involves the lack of vocabulary to

and we like emm.. humedad? Humedad

complete the idea of the answer that he is

(a) no se como se dice. Y and.. we

trying to express. Moreover, we think that

also want to go to emm.. Lautaro, that is

this problem is related to the low teaching

closer (b) to Temuco.

of vocabulary in his learning experience.

(Schreuder & Weltens, 1993)
(b) In this example, we think he made a
wrong choice from the Word Family of the
word close. We believe he wanted to use
the meaning of near but instead of
choosing the word close which is the
Lemma- he said closer Word Family-.
(Read, 2014)

23,
24,
25.

Emm... what I like the most about my

In this answer there is a word choice issue

life is the relation that I have with my

since the learner was affected by the

girlfriend. Because shes so tender and

Spanish influence. He selected a word

so... amazing and she she thinks the

from his L1 and literally translated it into

same things the.. than me.

the

targeted

language.

This

occurs

because L1 background usually influences

the performance of the learner when using
L2 for speaking. (Schreuder & Weltens,
1993)

13

4. PROPOSED TREATMENT AND REMEDIATION

After analyzing the errors that our learner had in his speech, we found a variety of
solutions that he can apply to improve his learning process. Furthermore, we have
chosen two issues to deal with and to suggest different strategies for improving his L2
performance based on different activities that we found in web pages and Youtube
channels.
For the learner phonetics difficulties, our proposal can include more practice in the
different words that he mispronounced. He must pay attention to the phonetic
transcriptions on the dictionaries when he looks up a word. Likewise, we recommend
him to use the website Oxford Learner's Dictionary since he can listen to the
pronunciation on this web page (http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com). Also, a
skillful tool, that we believe it is excellent for his free time practice, is the Youtube
channel

called

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4v5y63qddOVOhd8zQZmhg)

fluentway.com
where

the

learner can listen to a variety of videos which explain how he can develop his English
fluency and learn from his typical errors.
On the other hand, for the learner lexical issues, as we already know that he loves
writing, listening and speaking on the second language, we encourage him to read
books that can be related to his interests for acquiring new vocabulary. Also it could
help him to improve his grammar weakness. Furthermore, when he is reading he can
immediately check the meaning and the correct pronunciation on the dictionary to be
aware of it, and to be able of using it correctly when speaking.

5. CONCLUSIONS
14

To conclude, we must stand out our learner, who had a great participation for this
investigation. Furthermore, pointing out that all the questions that we made were
necessary to notice the main difficulties that our interviewee had, such as the
grammatical, pronunciation, fluency and hesitation issues. Fortunately, every mistake
has a clear and non-difficult solution. Our main goal was to create teaching
strategies, so he could apply and began to correct his mistakes, and not committed
them again in the future as an English student. Consequently, we recommended him
the use of different English websites and YouTube channels, which can help him with
the correct pronunciation of words. Besides, the increase of his reading ability for
acquiring new vocabulary, grammar weakness improvement and of course free time
practice would expand his English level. Finally, we think that his lack of motivation
and activities on his in L2 in his secondary school classes, can explain the level that
he has now; notwithstanding, we strongly believe that if he follows our suggestions
carefully, he will achieve a favorable level on English language and benefits him in
his major.

6. REFERENCES

15

BBC. (2014). The Sounds of English, BBC Learning English. Retrieved June 04,
2016,

from

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/pronunciation/othercons
t3
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (2010). Teaching Pronunciation
Hardback with Audio CDs (2): A Course Book and Reference Guide.
Cambridge

University

Press.

Retrieved

June

03,

2016,

from

https://books.google.cl/books?
hl=es&lr=&id=dqgvZq4T4foC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=pronunciation+problems+f
or+spanish+speakers&ots=djvrL7C9RA&sig=j4O6iHdPPI8MTqWKuQCkYW8
2rvg#v=onepage&q=spanish%20vowels&f=false
Fras Conde, X. (2001). Introduccin a la fontica y fonologa del espaol. Ianua.
Revista

Philologica

Romanica.

Retrieved

June

02,

2016,

from

http://www.romaniaminor.net/ianua/sup/sup04.pdf
Hornby, A. (2000).Oxford Advanced Learner`s Dictionary: Of current English. Sixth
Edition, Oxford University Press.
Rasekhi, V. (2009). ESL/EFL learners' perception of their pronunciation needs and
strategies. Fresno: California State University. Retrieved May 30, 2016, from
http://64.8.104.26/11kolokdaragh.pdf
Read, J. (2014). Some Resources in Vocabulary Assessment. Retrieved June 04,
2016, from file:///C:/Users/Usuario/AppData/Local/Temp/Some%20Resources
%20in%20Vocabulary%20Assessment%20-%20Webinar%20%28Read,
%202014%29-1.pdf

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Romero-Trillo, J. (Ed.). (2008). Pragmatics and corpus linguistics: A mutualistic

entente (Vol. 2). Walter de Gruyter. Retrieved June 03, 2016, from
https://books.google.cl/books?
hl=es&lr=&id=8ZRfXOd0nWMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=Pragmatics+and+Corp
us+Linguistics:
+A+Mutualistic+Entente&ots=KCSFzHlqQr&sig=07sOb2nIb80kOag4EZ5PBQ
Kb_5A#v=onepage&q=Pragmatics%20and%20Corpus%20Linguistics%3A
%20A%20Mutualistic%20Entente&f=false
Salcedo, C. S. (2010). The phonological system of Spanish. Revista de lingstica y
lenguas

aplicadas, 5(1),

195-209.

Retrieved

June

03,

2016

from

file:///C:/Users/Maria%20Jose/Downloads/DialnetThePhonologicalSystemOfSpanish-3269828.pdf
Schreuder, R., & Weltens, B. (Eds.). (1993). The bilingual lexicon (Vol. 6). John
Benjamins

Publishing.

Retreived

June

03,

2016,

from

https://books.google.cl/books?
hl=es&lr=&id=Rpm9Eei4ZR8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA191&dq=lexical+problem+while
+speaking+english&ots=bARTk_71S&sig=vT2qweXC73CXrGu754Y7vJzXVds&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=inf
luence&f=false

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