1. Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción.
Facultad de Educación.
Pedagogía en Educación Media en Inglés.
Language Learner Profile
Iris Roa.
English learning and acquisition.
Juan Castro.
María Lagos.
Concepción, 19th
June 2014.

2. Introduction
Learning a second language has different difficulties during the acquisition
process. Students` performance could vary depending on their abilities and
dedication. The first stage of this process is the most difficult for them because
beginners do not have the necessary tools to have an efficient level of proficiency
in language. The objective of this work is to analyze a beginner`s speaking
productive skill through the analysis of some interview answers. The focus will be
on providing an evaluation about grammar and phonetics mistakes by means of
examination of the learner performance displayed in his answers.

3. Background:
Student`s background
The learner`s name is Leonardo Ascensio. He is 19 years old and lives in
Talcahuano with his parents. Leonardo is a first year student of English pedagogy
at Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción. He has acquired his
knowledge in L2 (second language) mostly at school and “Comercial profesor
Sergio Moraga Arcil” high school. It is noteworthy that under the learner`s point of
view he did not receive so many tools to develop the English competences. He
described the teaching process that he received as “poor”. However, this situation
did not affect his intentions of being an English teacher.
English studies
Leonardo started his English studies when he was in 5° grade at “Centinela sur”
school. There, he received the basic base in L2. But he never had an English
class in the English language. All of his classes were in Spanish so the L2
acquisition was inadequate because he never was exposed to the language. In
high school he learned English in the same conditions, since his classes were also
in Spanish. He had English classes from the first year and in third year he had the
advantage of having two kind of English classes. “Sergio Moraga Arcil high school”
provides student with common English and also with technical English. The last
one is to prepare students to use l2 in the professional area. This is because
learners are prepared to work in companies in administrative departments.
Leonardo added that even though he had 5 hours of English at the week they were
in Spanish and with a low level of proficiency.

4. Testing:
Taped Interview
T: Interviewer
F: Interviewee
1. T: How did you learn English?
2. F: Errr mmm at the school, listen to music and see movie.
3. T: How often do you study?
4. F: Mmmm Only one in the week.
5. T: Which skill is more difficult for you?
6. F: Difficult is … for me listening, listening and speaking because emm the
7. people mmm speaking very fastest.
8. T: Which strategies do you use to study?
9. F: I make it summarize with c-map and memorize and…
10.T: Are you regret to choose this major?
11.F: No, no because I like English.
12.T: Would you like to study abroad?
13.F: Eh yes because I can learn more and know new space and new country.
14.T: Do you think that your high school gave you a good base in English?
15.F: No because the class was in the Spanish.

5. Phonetic transcription:
At the school, listen to music and see movie. Only one in the week. Difficult is for
me listening, listening and speaking because the people speaking very fastest. I
make it summarize with c-map and memorize and.
/ ʌt ðə skuːl ˈlɪsn tə ˈmjuːzɪk and siː ˈmuːvɪ. ˈonlɪ wʌn ɪn ðə wiːk. ˈdɪfɪkəlt ɪz fɒr miː
ˈlɪsnɪnk, ˈlɪsnɪŋ and ˈspiːkɪŋ bɪˈkɒz ðə ˈpiːpɒl ˈspiːkɪŋ ˈverɪ ˈfɑːstes ˈaɪ ˈmeɪk ɪt
ˈsʌməraɪz wɪð se-map and ˈmemɒraɪz and/

6. Analysis:
General analysis:
It can be appreciate that the interviewee has a significant deficient in grammar. He
has problems with the uses of tenses, pluralisation, omission of subject, order of
constituents and the lack of connectors are clearly identified. Due to his low level of
proficiency, his answers were very slight. There were significant syntactical
problems shown among other aspects with the misuse of tenses. Leonardo
answered all the questions in present simple tense, even those questions in which
we asked for aspects related to the past.
Furthermore, there were phonetic problems. Pronunciation is one of the most
difficult issues for learners when they are acquiring a new language. In Leonardo’s
case the influence of Spanish affected the pronunciation of final sounds. He
omitted the sound /s/ in all the plural forms.
Moreover, as he had mentioned, his instruction in English was not very good, that
is why it is hard for him being aware of his mistakes and correct himself because
the knowledge that he has is not enough.
.

7. Phonetics and phonology analysis:
Word: fastest (line 7).
Leonardo said: /fɑːstes/
He should say: /fɑːstɪst/.
Here it was a writing interference; Leonardo pronounced the word in a similar way
of its written form. In addition he omitted the final sound /t/. Usually, there are
problems related to pronunciation due to L2 learners get confuse with the written
word and the pronunciation of those words.
Words: only (line 4) no (line 11)
Leonardo said: /ɒnlɪ/ /nɒ/
He should say: /əʊnlɪ/ /nəʊ/
In line 4 we found a problem with the world only, he did not pronounce the
diphthong /əʊ/. He said /ɒnlɪ/. This is because in Spanish we do not have any
sound similar to a schwa and that is why schwa sound is so difficult to produce.
Furthermore, we found a similar problem in the line 11, he pronounced correctly
the first no /nəʊ/, but the second one was pronounced by him exactly as in Spanish
even though he pronounced one word immediately after the other.

8. Grammar analysis
Grammatical tense: Difficult is for me listening and speaking because the people
are speaking very fastest
Leonardo: the people are speaking very fastest.
Correct: the people speak very fast.
Analysis: He used present continuous in the sentence “people are speaking
very fast”. He was describing an action that is regular, true and normal. This
characteristic is a proprietary feature of present simple tense, but he used present
continuous. This tense misuse is due to interference in his knowledge. He did not
realize that he was not describing an activity in progress.
Order of constituents: Difficult is for me listening and speaking because the
people are speaking very fastest
Leonardo: Difficult is for me listening and speaking.......
Correct: Listening and speaking are difficult for me because......
Analysis: Leonardo produced a sentence in which he located the subject after the
verb. Moreover, he used an adjective to start the sentence. The adjective was
defining the subject so in this case it is appropriate to locate it in the predicate of
the sentence. It is due to learners tend to transfer the sentence structure of his
native language.

9. Proposal
The learner has serious deficiencies in his speaking production skill. We can
attribute this situation to an inadequate preparation due to a deficient teaching
process or to a lack of motivation by the learner. Leonardo needs to improve
mainly in grammar, because he has a weak knowledge in this aspect. One way to
improve it is providing him with grammatical structures, to make easier for him to
understand the order of the constituents of sentences in the English language. For
example the structure of present progressive is: s+ v+ ing+ c. To have an effective
improvement Leonardo must perform exercises where words can be ordered
depending on their use. This could be done using programs such as Focus on
Grammar or online web sites. It should also be reinforce the use of different types
of words like adjectives and nouns to make it easier for him to be able to identify
them and form sentences with the correct order. Moreover he could use the
computer programs available in the University such as Pronunciation Power in
order to practice, for instance vowel and final sounds, among others, to overcome
his mistakes. A good exercise to improve pronunciation is to record himself saying
a short text, and then listening and reading the text at the same time comparing
what he has said with what the text said. Thus he clearly is going to identify the
mistakes that he made.

10. Conclusion:
As we have seen during this course, there are many hypothesis, techniques
and approaches about the learning process of the second language, that help us to
understand the process and it give us strategies to develop in a better way how
students learn a second language.
We could observe that our interviewee was very nervous even afraid of
speaking. As well as Krashen suggested in his hypotheses, the affective filter has
an important role in speaking production. During the interview we observed that our
interviewee was very nervous and that factor affected the production of his speech.
Moreover, the lack of knowledge about grammatical rules contributed to the
production of sentences that were not well created. That is why it is very important
to have a good model of teaching, where we can mix different methods and
techniques in order to create a useful model that would cover all the students’
needs in the classroom.
Finally, If the student is able to understand l2 language structure then it will
became something natural to him to use effectively the grammar rules in speaking
productive skill.

11. Index
Page
1. Introduction 1
2. Learner’s Background 2
2.1 Student’s Background 2
2.2 English studies 2
3. Testing 3
3.1 Taped interview 3
3.2 Phonetic transcription 4

12. 4. Analysis 5
4.1 General Analysis 5
4.2 Phonetic Analysis 6
4.3 Grammatical Analysis 7
5. Proposal
6. Conclusions