Language Learner Profile.

Lina Aazco Hermosilla.

Luis Gutierrez Oviedo.


Concepcin, June 17th 2014.

1. -Students Background
The name of the student interviewed is Javiera Caro Aedo. She is 18 years old, and currently she is
a freshman studying English Pedagogy at UCSC.
She studied in San Gabriel Arcangel Primary School and Maria Inmaculada Concepcin High school
in Los Angeles, where she had English classes two hours a week as part of the national curriculum.
2. - Interview.
1.- Where are you from?
Answer: Im from Chile, Los Angeles, and now Im living in Chiguayante, Concepcin.
2.- What is the thing that you love the most about Concepcin?
Answer: I think Concepcin is more fun than Los Angeles. Los Angeles is really quiet.
3.- Do you think is hard to be a college student?
Answer: No, I like being a college student, I think in school there are too many rules, but here you
are free.
4.- Are you happy with the education you receive in this university?
Answer: Yes, Im happy because I think this is the best university and it has really good teachers.
5.- What do you think about university life so far?
Answer: I think that is kind of cool, because you have time for almost everything, and the teachers
dont makes you study, I mean if you want to study, you do.
6.- When did you decide to study English?
Answer: Because emmm, for me is easy, and when I grow up I wanna be a English teacher.



7.- What is your opinion about Chilean education?
Answer: I think that its good now, I dont think it have to be free because you can work for the
for your own education and ehh, the state gives you scholarships so is not so too complicated
study something you like.
8.- What would you do to improve Chilean education?
Answer: Only the good teachers ahh would have to work and the other teachers that need to
work or have or would like to work they have to study more and improve the theytheir
knowledge.

3. - Phonetic Transcription.
In this part of the investigation, the answers of the questions 5, 6 and 7 have been chosen to be
transcribed and analyzed.
3.1.- Transcription of answer 5:
/a k t z kand v kul/ bkz ju hv tam fr lmst vr/ nd tiz dnt meks
ju stdi/ a min f ju wnt tu stdi/ ju du/
3.2.- Transcription of answer 6:
/ bkz emmm/ f mi z izi/ nd wn a gr p a wn bi gl ti/
3.3.- Transcription of answer 7:
/a k t ts gd na/ a dnt k t hv tu bi fri bkz ju kn wk f i f jr n
djuken nd ehh/ stet gvz ju sklps s z nt s tu kmplketd stdi sm ju
lak/




4.- Analysis and Examples.
4.1.- General Analysis.
The main purpose of this interview is to find mistakes in the speech of the student. To achieve this,
the interview was designed in a way that a higher level of English is required from the student with
each question. The interview begins with simple questions, which require simple answers.
Progressively, the questions get more complex with the intention of requiring more elaborate
answers and a higher use of the language, which can cause errors in the speech of the
interviewee.
Having in consideration that the student is a first year student, some kind of mistakes were
expected from her. Hence, grammatical errors that can be easily spotted due to the limited
vocabulary of the student.
In addition, reviewing the recording, phonetic errors were found in aspects of intonation and
fluency.
4.2. - Phonetics and Phonology.
This part will be focused on the intonation errors that the interviewee shows in the chosen lines
(answers of the question 5, 6 and 7).
Answering question number 5, the student said:
I think that is kind of cool, because you have time for almost everything, and the teachers dont
makes you study, I mean if you want to study, you do.
Here, the words cool, everything and study were pronounced with a rising intonation
instead of being pronounced with a falling intonation. The student did it, because she hesitated
when she was giving her answer, which gives the impression of making a question. That is the
reason of the rising intonation.
Answering question number 6, the student said:
Because emmm, for me is easy, and when I grow up I wanna be a English teacher.
The word easy was pronounced with a rising intonation instead of a falling intonation, as she did
in the previous example.
Answering question number 7, the student said:
I think that its good now, I dont think it have to be free because you can work for the for your
own education and ehh, the state gives you scholarships so is not so too complicated study
something you like.
It is evident that while the interviewee was looking for the right word to give a proper answer. She
used the hesitation word ehh and made pauses between ideas, which impeded fluency,
therefore, her intonation was not correct.

4.3.- Grammar
This section is focused on grammatical errors found on the chosen answers.
-Answering question number 5, the student said:
I think that is kind of cool, because you have time for almost everything, and the teachers dont
makes you study, I mean if you want to study, you do.
Subject Omission: The student omits the subject.
Subject-verb agreement: This is a very common mistake that students in elementary levels make.
The student adds the final s to the verb to plural nouns.
Correction: I think that it is kind of cool, because you have time for almost everything, and
teachers dont make you study. I mean, if you want to study, you do.
-Answering question number 6, the student said:
Because emmm, for me is easy, and when I grow up I wanna be a English teacher.
Subject omission: There is the omission of the subject it.
Colloquial language use: The student uses wanna instead of want to. This mistake is very
common, since many students these days have a previous knowledge of the language acquired by
watching sitcoms or TV series, which use colloquial language.
Correction: Because it is easy for me, and when I grow up I want to be an English teacher.




In the answer of the question number 7, the student said:
I think that its good now. I dont think it have to be free because you can work for the for your
own education, and eehh, the state gives you scholarships so is not so too complicated study
something you like.
Subject-verb agreement: The student repeats this mistake. She uses the singular pronoun it and
the verb: have.
Language use: The student use the word free as a literal translation from her first language.
Instead, she should have said: for free.
Subject omission: The student omits the subject it.

Correction: I think it is good the way it is. I dont think it has to be for free because you can work
to pay your own education, and the state gives you scholarships, so it is not so complicated to
study something you like.

5.- Proposal
In addition to watching more TV in English, reading, listening to music or recordings of native
speakers, a good recommendation to improve writing is to study in depth grammar rules, verb
tenses, etc. As our interviewee is currently in her first year, we assume that she will likely improve
her pronunciation and speaking skills in the course of years, especially when studying the subject
of Phonetics. This will help the learner to acquire a higher level of proficiency and fluency.







6.- Conclusion.
To conclude, the interview with the student proved that mistakes arose during speech, especially
when the complexity of the question was higher, the interviewee was forced to respond with
unfamiliar vocabulary or use words that she may have not been completely sure of the usage,
which led her to make mistakes, to hesitate and to use the wrong intonation.
Under those circumstances, we can determine that Javiera, even though is in first year at a
beginner level, she has a higher understanding of the language, since there was no need of
restating questions or explaining them. The answers she gave were somewhat elaborated using
not only low frequency words. She could be easily understood.