Celta Focus on the Learner
- Submitted by: elzoog
- Views: 1358
- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 01/19/2012 04:12 AM
- Pages: 6
- Report this Essay
Focus on student: Ji Hyun
Level: Pre-intermediate
Word Count: 1231
For this assignment, I interviewed Ji Hyun who is a 20 something Korean. During the first day of class, I noticed that compared to other students, she had traveled to many different places. She had traveled to Guam, Saipan, and Hong Kong. She is in the middle of her class so there are a few students above her level, and a few students below.
During the interview, I did not notice anything that stood out as unusual for an adult Korean student. She still has trouble with certain word endings (such as saying “consultant-u” instead of “consultant”). This is because in Korean, it is impossible to end some words with consonants. In speaking, she generally thinks of the Korean sentence and tries to translate the Korean sentence into English. This is evident in sentences such as “I’m not human resource development, so training.”. She wanted to say that although she personally doesn’t work in human resource development, the company she works for arranges training for clients.
At the beginning of the interview, I gave her a sheet (that I wrote myself) to get an idea of why she wants to study English. I also included a few questions about what her style of learning and interests are. Her answers indicated that she has an interest in many things, but that her preferred style of learning is still teacher centered. The two least favorite activities on the sheet were practicing dialogs (rather pedantic) and learning songs (maybe not relevant to her reasons for learning English). The one sentence on the sheet, “I can get a better job because I want to work multi-company.” along with other answers on the sheet, indicate that she is primarily interested in using English to get a good job. The grammar of that sentence, and what it indicates about her level of English, will be discussed later.
Like most Koreans, she studied English since middle school. Given my 5 years of...
Level: Pre-intermediate
Word Count: 1231
For this assignment, I interviewed Ji Hyun who is a 20 something Korean. During the first day of class, I noticed that compared to other students, she had traveled to many different places. She had traveled to Guam, Saipan, and Hong Kong. She is in the middle of her class so there are a few students above her level, and a few students below.
During the interview, I did not notice anything that stood out as unusual for an adult Korean student. She still has trouble with certain word endings (such as saying “consultant-u” instead of “consultant”). This is because in Korean, it is impossible to end some words with consonants. In speaking, she generally thinks of the Korean sentence and tries to translate the Korean sentence into English. This is evident in sentences such as “I’m not human resource development, so training.”. She wanted to say that although she personally doesn’t work in human resource development, the company she works for arranges training for clients.
At the beginning of the interview, I gave her a sheet (that I wrote myself) to get an idea of why she wants to study English. I also included a few questions about what her style of learning and interests are. Her answers indicated that she has an interest in many things, but that her preferred style of learning is still teacher centered. The two least favorite activities on the sheet were practicing dialogs (rather pedantic) and learning songs (maybe not relevant to her reasons for learning English). The one sentence on the sheet, “I can get a better job because I want to work multi-company.” along with other answers on the sheet, indicate that she is primarily interested in using English to get a good job. The grammar of that sentence, and what it indicates about her level of English, will be discussed later.
Like most Koreans, she studied English since middle school. Given my 5 years of...