Learner's Spoken Language

The chosen group for the observation of the assessment of learners’ spoken language in the class consisted of beginner students. This is a mixed ability aged between 7 and 8 . The majority of the class are successful, they have a good range of vocabulary as ider this parallel to what they have been taught.But if we consider this situation in general, they absolutely have limited vocabulary and they are not fluent as they are second language learner and young learners. But if we take advantage of their age we can teach lots things easily.Inspite of their limited range of vocabulary and grammar rules , they are eager to speak in English , they never hesitate to express themselves. They make lots of mistakes but commonly those mistakes doesn’t jeopardise meaning or message.

The topic of the lesson that I observed was “holiday”. Teacher entered clasroom with a big suitcase full of different stuff. She asked some questions and also tried to make them tell their holidays. The topic also includes the foreign countries and their famous places. Here are some example errors from this lesson:

1. “Teacher : Where am I going?

Student : You are going to holiday.”

This is an example for generalisation . The student used “to” instead of “on” . She chose the wrong preposition. To prevent from this error. Teacher s give should give different uses of go in class activities.

2. “ Teacher: What is France famous for?

Student : France is famous for is Eiffel Tower.”

Here, the students and the teacher are talking about famous places of foreign countries to visit on holiday. The student understood the question and answeres in the correct meaning but the sentence form is wrong. This is the example for “ordering errors” . the student knows that he has to use a helping verb but he couldn’t remember where to place it. Actually , he knows the order couldn’t manage to remember it at that moment. Therefore, this is a performance error, too.

3.“Teacher: What do you do on your holiday?

Student : I am swim in the sea.”

The student couldn’t decide to use “am” or not . She knows that she’s not going to use “-ing” rule but couldn’t remember the exact form. This error displays performance error.

4. “Teacher: What is Italy famous for?

Student : Italy is famous for pizza and spaghetti.”

The student mispronounced the word “famous” he said “/fαmus/” We can understand that L1 interference effected his pronounciation because of lack of practice, he read the word in his mother tongue.With adequate repetition, it may be corrected and developed.

5. “Teacher : What do you do in Spain?”

Student : When I go to Spain, I eat paella and watch bullfight show.”

This student showed great competence in this sentence . We can infer from this sentence that this student can build-up compound sentences using “when” and knows how to connect the sentences.After “and” he didn’t use the subject again, he omitted it as it’s supposed to be. Additionally, he could use the correct preposition with “go”.He could have told “go on a Spain” because of the pattern of “go on a holiday” as they practiced it at the beginning of the lesson. The organisation of the words was really successful. These are the proofs of good syntax and grammar.

6. “I’m in Paris , now. I’m visiting Eiffel Tower, today.”

In this part of the lesson, they imagined that they are in different countries for holiday . These are the sentences of that postcard. Students told the sentences first, they discussed it and then write. This student was perfect in pronounciaton. In these sentences , “visiting Eiffel Tower” words would be problemin the aspect of pronounciation , but this student had no problem. Moreover, he had accent. Although, he is not a native speaker. The sentence form was well-organised, too. Also , the vocabulary choice was successful.They haven’t learned the word “visit” yet, but he spontaneously and successfully used it in the correct way and context. This shows that he has larger vocabulary knowledge than his classmates.

7. “ Student: My mother went to America.

Teacher : When ?

Student : Tomorrow.”

As we see, the student has extra knowledge. She heard past form of “go” and tried to use it. I could understand that she made a mistake after the question of teacher. She was talking about the following day but she used past simple. This symbolises covert error.

8. “Teacher : Do you want to g oto Germany?

Student : Yes, but I want to visit Collesium , so I want to goto Italy.

Surprisingly, the student tried to use discourse markers in this utterance. This shows us that he organises his thoughts well. We can guess which direction the communication goes by the help of discourse markers.

9. “ I want to see the Girl Tower.”

This sentence includes L1 interference. The student thought in his mother tongue.This error occurs when the learner thinks in her/ his own language. This error can be named as interlanguage error.

10. “Teacher : Where do you want to go ?

Student : I want to g oto Paris and see Eiffel Tower, because I was born in Paris.”

In this excellent sentence, we can see the student’s competence in the target language. She chose the correct vocabularies to Express her thoughts. This sentence is grammatically perfect for this age group. This class haven’t learned the passive voice yet, but she is familiar to it and performed it efficiently. This example, also shows sample for good syntax and grammar.

Since my students are young learners, they are neither fluent nor accurate enough. However, they are eager to speak in L2. Some of the students make lots of performance and overgeneralisation errors. They need to practice more , especially in speaking. They also have pronounciation mistakes and we can easily infer the effects of L1 interference in their utterances. They need to learn to stop thinking in L1.