Second Language Acquisition - Learner's Profile

INTRODUCTION

The person that I have chosen for this assignment, in order to analyse his performance in English, is called John and he is 23 years old. He comes from Greece and he was here in England for three weeks visiting a friend. He has been studying English for seven years in a private school of English back in Greece and he holds the Cambridge First Certificate degree. After going back to Greece, he will continue his studies in order to set exams for the Cambridge Proficiency. John was very keen on helping me with the interview and showed no hesitation in doing it. He came to my house and really enjoyed this experience as he revealed afterwards. The only thing that he asked before the interview was to give him the questions and so that he has some time to prepare.

His level of English is considered to be ‘Higher-Intermediate to Advanced '. He appeared capable of communicating by using the English language although he is facing some problems in certain aspects of the English language such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and discourse.

However, before I go on to analyse my learner 's performance I will have to give a short account on how the English language is taught in Greece and which are the differences between the two languages.

In the interview, John is trying to explain that he found it difficult to communicate because the language that is taught in Greece is not the same as the one that is most English people speak. This means that during his studies he did not come across any authentic texts and especially authentic samples of spoken language. This is an important feature of Coursebook Evaluation research since many writers such as Cunningsworth (1995) have focused on the problem of authenticity in coursebooks. It has to be mentioned that in Greece most English schools use coursebooks and the most common method that is still being used is Grammar Translation. Although, John says that he speaks English with his teachers and classmates, he still found it difficult to communicate with English people which is a result of the use of coursebooks which don 't include authentic language. Furthermore, in Greece most English schools concentrate on the Cambridge FCE and CPE examinations. As a result, teachers focus on these papers and not on authentic language.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE

it is very important to highlight the differences between the English and Greek language at this stage in order to see the possible difficulties a Greek learner would face.

Phonology and pronunciation is an area that most Greek learners have difficulty in because the two systems are very different. Greek learners have difficulty in perceiving and/or pronouncing correctly many English sounds (Swan & Smith, 1992). As far as the vowels are concerned there are only a few vowels, which have equivalents in Greek, and the rest of the vowels are perceived with difficulty. For example, there are no equivalents for /æ/, /a:/, /u:/, /з:/, / /, / /, / /, / / and / /. In the Greek language there are only five vowels /a/, /e/, /i:/, /u/ and /o/ which makes it very difficult for Greek learners to conceive the English vowel system.

As far as the consonants are concerned the difference is not so broad compared to the vowel system. Many of the English consonants have equivalents in Greek but still there are some problems. For instance, / / is often pronounced as /s/, / / is often replaced by /z/ and / / is usually pronounced as / / (Swan & Smith, 1992). In addition, as Sofia C. Papaefthymiou-Lytra points out in this book because Greek spelling is phonetic Greek learners tend to pronounce all the letters that are written: /me/ for me

As far as grammar is concerned, the two grammatical systems are similar in many ways. However, there are some forms that are different and must not be confused. Greek learners might experience difficulties with some modal verbs, since they do not have one-to-one equivalents in Greek. Also, articles, pronouns, determiners, adjectives and adverbs can be a problem as they are quite different in the Greek language. Finally, prepositions are a major problem. According to S.C. Papaefthymiou-Lytra, ‘most Greek prepositions have rough English equivalents.

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCTIVE DATA

In my Performance Analysis, I am going to concentrate on two aspects of the language, pronunciation and grammar. This is because, although John is facing some difficulties in most aspects such as vocabulary and discourse, in my opinion, pronunciation and grammar are of higher importance.

As far as pronunciation is concerned, John 's accent is a representative of Greek learners and the errors that they make. It is obvious that he is not trying to speak with the English accent but there are some important errors that must be mentioned. For instance, the word vary in line 66 is pronounced as /va:rai/. This is probably because y is pronounced as /wai/ in the English alphabet. As I mentioned before, according to S.C. Papaefthymiou-Lutra (cited by Swan & Smith, 1992) Greek spelling is phonetic and Greek learners have a tendency to pronounce all the letters that are written, often giving them their Greek values. That is why John is making this error. However, because there are too many errors in his pronunciation, I am going to focus on two consonants that he is pronouncing incorrectly, the letter /r/ and the sound /h/.

John is pronouncing all letters the way they are pronounced in Greek, which is a major mistake. r in Greek is always pronounced in contrast to English where very often this sound is not heard. As a result, John has a difficulty in making this sound weak. In table 1 we can see some of the words that John has wrongly pronounced.

In many occasions in these words r might be included in the phonetic transcription such as in for which can be either /f :/ or /f :r/ (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 1990) but there is a difference between the way John is pronouncing this sound and the way that this sound should be pronounced.

Table 1 Errors in the pronunciation of /r/
WORD JOHN 'S PRONUNCIATION CORRECT PRONUNCIATION third (line 4) /èз:rd/ /èз:d/ for (line 9) /f :r/ /f :/ more (line 10) /m :r/ /m :/ airport (line 10) /erp :rt/ /e p :rt/ firstly (line 12) /fз:rstli/ Fз:stli started (line 12) /sta:rtid/ /sta:tid/ years (line 13) /jiars/ /jiaz/ there (line 16) /ðer/ /ðe / were (line 16) /wз:r/ /wз:/ learn (line 17) /lз:rn/ /lз:n/ after (line 18) /a:fter/ /a:ft / far (line 26) /fa:r/ /fa:/ word (line 28) /w rd/ /wз:d/ fairly (line 34) /ferli/ /fe li/ teacher (line 40) /ti:t er/ /ti:t / never (line 40) /never/ /nev / are (line 57) /a:r/ /a:/ higher (line 60) /haier/ /hai / here (line 60) /hiar/ /hi / weather (line 65) /weðer/ /weð / their (line 71) /ðe r/ /ðe / career (line 83) /ka:rir/ /kari / horror (line 87) /horor/ /hor / familiar (line 90) /familiar/ /f mili / pictures (line 91) /pikt ur/ /pikt / concert (line 93) /konsз:rt/ /k nsз:t/ course (line 100) /k :rs/ /k :s/ four (101) /f :r/ /f :/

This analysis has shown that John has not been taught the pronunciation of /r/ properly since there are no signs to show that he knows how this sound should be pronounced. This is probably a result of inadequacy in teaching.

Moreover, we are going to look at the pronunciation of /h/ in the beginning of words such as have. As S.C. Papaefthymiou-Lytra (Swan & Smith, 1992) correctly points out, /h/ is non-existent in Greek. It is often replaced by the rougher Greek sound /x/ (like ch in loch). The wrongly pronounced words are displayed in table 2.

Table 2 Errors in the pronunciation of /h/
WORD JOHN 'S PRONUNCIATION CORRECT PRONUNCIATION have (line 42) /xæv/ /hæv/ here (line 65) /xiar/ /hi / high (line 67) /xai/ /hai/ has (line 73) /xæz/ /hæz/ having (line 81) /xæv / /hæv / horror (line 87) /xoror/ /hor /

However, in this occasion we have to mention that John did not pronounce all the words that begin with /h/ falsely. For instance, in line 10 he pronounced home correclty and in line 13 have was also correct. Table 3 shows the rest of the words that he pronounced correct.

Table 3 Correct Pronunciation of /h/
WORD
home (line 10) have (line 13) have (line 22) had (line (32) have (line 33) have (line 40) highly (line 49) have (line 55) higher (line 60) here (line 60) had (line 64) has (line 73) have (line 96) Most of the mistakes were made when he wanted to talk about himself by using ‘I have ' and particularly when he wanted to emphasise something. This might be one reason for the errors that he made. Also, there is the possibility of lack of attention while speaking. Since he is not a native speaker, he has to watch out for such slips as in other occasions he might be misunderstood.

The second aspect of the language that I am going to analyse, is grammar. John has a fairly good level of English and he did not have many errors in his speech. However, I am going to display his errors and try to suggest reasons for making them. Table 4 shows the errors that he has made in grammar.

Table 4 Grammar Errors
TENSES ARTICLES ADJECTIVES
& ADVERBS DETERMINERS & PRONOUNS WORD ORDER PREPO-SITIONS PLURALS
I was being (line 58)
I am pleased (line 110) most of people (line 18) in Greek language (line 41) in English language (line 42) a classical music (line 96) they mostly speak (line 89) slowly (line 54) absolute (line 61) just (line 67) mostly (line 108) to it in (line 66) that (line 89) too much familiar (line 90) many energetic (line 104) who see in the (line 109) (lines 28-29) for one week (line 9) from since (line 58) about the bad weather (line 65) an English people (line 53)
My plans is (line 79) main differences (line 94)

As far as the tenses are concerned there were two errors in lines 58 and 110. In line 58 John wants to say that ‘since he was a young boy ' but he is adding ‘being ' and in line 110 he said ‘I am pleased to watch a live concert ' where it would be more suitable to say ‘I would be pleased… ' since he has not attended one from what we can understand. those mistakes are of minor importance since most of the sentences are correct as regards tenses. Word Order errors can be seen in lines 28-29. He is trying to explain that he wants to learn how he can translate every meaning of a word in Greek into English. Moreover, there are some errors in plural forms such as in lines 53, 79 and 94. In line 53 John says ‘if an English people ' where he had to say ‘if an English person '. Likewise in line 79 he had to say ‘my plans are… ' and in line 94 he could say ‘main difference ' instead of ‘main differences '. Furthermore, he has made some errors concerning prepositions which are clearly because of translating from Greek.
The rest of the errors could be seen as more serious because of their frequence. As far as articles are concerned, he has made the same mistake in three occasions showing that he does not know whether to use ‘the ' or not (lines 18, 41 and 42) and ‘a ' is not necessary in line 96. The rules for definite and indefinite articles are not the same in Greek so this could have influenced John 's performance. Adjectives and adverbs can be confusing as well, as a result John is using them inappropriately in many occasions such as in lines 54, 56, 61, 67 and 108. Finally, determiners and pronouns can be a bit of a problem for Greek learners as the table shows.

However, most of these errors were not made as a result of unawareness. It is obvious that John would be able to correct them since in his speech, he has repeated some of the same forms correctly. It could be said that these errors were made out of rapidity or lack of attention.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Hooke, R. & J. Rowel (1991), A Handbook of English Pronunciation, Nelson.

• Larsen-Freeman, D. & M. Long (1991), An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research, London: Longman

• Norrish, J (1992), Language Learners and Their Errors, Macmillan

• Papaefthymiou-Lytra, S.C. (1992), "Greek Speakers" in Swan M. & B. Smith ed. (1992) Learner English. Cambridge University Press.

• Wells, J.C. (1990), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Longman

Bibliography: • Hooke, R. & J. Rowel (1991), A Handbook of English Pronunciation, Nelson. • Larsen-Freeman, D. & M. Long (1991), An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research, London: Longman • Norrish, J (1992), Language Learners and Their Errors, Macmillan • Papaefthymiou-Lytra, S.C. (1992), "Greek Speakers" in Swan M. & B. Smith ed. (1992) Learner English. Cambridge University Press. • Wells, J.C. (1990), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Longman