Running head: LEARNER PROJECT

Learner Language Project: Manuel

Tina Maric

Ball State University

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Learner Language Project: Manuel

Introduction

This project is a study of the language errors of an English learner in elementary school.

In this study, the learner’s background will be discussed, as well as each individual error

collected from writing and speech samples. A quantitative analysis of each error will be

presented in a graphic form to summarize the data. Additionally, a needs analysis of the student

will be presented as a discussion of what the student still needs instruction on and in what ways

based on the errors observed.

Learner’s Background

Manuel is a native Spanish-speaker in first grade at Burris Laboratory School. When he

came to Burris last year as a kindergartener, he did not speak any English. It was also unclear

whether or not he had had any prior formal schooling before coming to Burris as a

kindergartener.

Manuel lives with his mother, father, and younger sister. His family is originally from

Mexico. Spanish is exclusively spoken at home, and his family also watches Spanish-language

TV programs. His mother speaks only Spanish, but is taking English classes. His sister also

speaks primarily Spanish. At home, Manuel’s mother reads him books in Spanish to work on his

Spanish literacy skills, but she tries to focus on teaching math skills as well. Since Manuel’s

literacy materials are in English, his mother feels that he will practice those skills at school while

she can help him with math since it does not require English proficiency on her part.

As far as L1 proficiency, Manuel is fluent in Spanish. It is his primary mode of

communication within his familial unit. However, it is unknown whether he can read or write in

Spanish, although his speaking skills in Spanish are at the level of a fluent native speaker. In
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English, Manuel is at an intermediate speaking level. He can easily be understood most of the

time, but he does demonstrate notable nonnative-like speech qualities.

In his first-grade classroom, Manuel is receiving supplemental instruction in literacy.

When it’s time to work on these skills, the first-grade class is split into two groups of students:

those who work on skills at grade level, and those who work on materials above grade level.

Manuel is in the group that works at grade level. With regard to his standardized test scores,

Manuel has improved in each area tested from when he first started school as a kindergartner,

although he has not quite reached the level of his peers.

Manuel’s teacher says that when he’s in the classroom, his behavior is almost always

perfect. She says that he gets along with his peers very well. Academically, she says that one

area Manuel could improve on is asking questions when he needs help. For example, if all the

students are instructed to work on an assignment, she will notice that Manuel sometimes sits in

his seat without doing what was instructed. Then, when she goes to ask him if he knows what to

do, he will say that he does not know. Because of instances such as this one, his teacher says he

should work on raising his hand when he is confused. However, she recognizes that maybe he

does not do so because he might not know what exactly to ask, and also because he could be

embarrassed to ask a question when the other students do not.

Another area Manuel’s teacher has identified as an area to improve is his sense of

urgency and pacing when completing assignments. His teacher has noted that when she instructs

all the students to complete a task, he will delay in working on it and will work very slowly. She

has also mentioned that a factor contributing to his inability to sometimes work at an optimal

pace is that he gets distracted and off task. Manuel’s mother has also noted that when he has
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trouble with a task, he tends to not want to work on it and will give up easily, which could also

be contributing to his lag in completing certain assignments.

Some things Manuel likes are Spiderman and snakes. In particular, he really likes to read

books about and look at pictures of snakes. Another book Manuel enjoys is “Pete the Cat.” He

also confuses Cat in the Hat with Pete the Cat and calls a Cat in the Hat stuffed animal by the

name of Pete the Cat. His mother has also said that he loves to dance, and he has said that he

loves rock-and-roll music. He also loves to draw pictures of his family and other people from his

life. A sport that Manuel loves to do is swimming. His favorite candy is Milk Duds and his

favorite food is tacos with beans and cheese. His personality is very charming and he likes to kid

around with me, and sometimes will hide and pop out of a hiding place to try to scare me. He is a

joy to work with and student who wants to learn.

Results

To analyze Manuel’s errors, I have collected spoken and written samples of his language

usage from the afterschool meetings I have had with him, during which I have provided

supplemental literacy instruction. The following table and chart represent summaries of his

errors. The table gives the raw number of errors collected in each category, while the chart shows

each error category as a percent of Manuel’s total errors. In this section, an explanation will be

offered for each sample that was collected from the student as to why it was included in its

respective error category.

Categorization of Number of raw

source of error instances
Misinterpretation of 8
coarticulation
Vowel confusion 6
Tense 2
Plural 2
Vocabulary 2
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Sources of Learner Errors

Vocabulary
10%

Tense Vowel
10% confusion
30%
Plural
10%
Misinterpreting
coarticulation
(speaking and
writing)
40%

Misinterpretation of coarticulation (speaking and writing)

In both Manuel’s writing and speaking samples, instances of the misinterpretation of

coarticulation were found. The category represented under this heading refers to misspellings or

mispronunciations due to an incorrect aural perception of the pronunciation of certain words that

native speakers coarticulate. The first instance of this type of error occurred in Manuel’s first

writing sample. In his sentence, “it is rine octsod,” Manuel wrote the word “outside” this way

using the /k/ phoneme because that is the way he hears the word in spoken language, which

translates to the way he writes it. Native speakers, who are all around Manuel in his school

environment, do not clearly enunciate each sound of the word “outside” in their normal speech.

Although native speakers do not produce /k/ when pronouncing the word, the /t/ and /s/

phonemes are not clearly produced, which explains the reason Manuel did not correctly spell the

word. A similar effect can be observed in his second writing sample with the spellings of the

words “wot” (“want”), “wif” (“with”), “dar” (“dad”), and “fin” (“friend”). In these instances,

Manuel wrote the words the way he hears them pronounced by native speakers.

In one of Manuel’s speech samples, an excellent example of an error based on the

misinterpretation of native-speaker coarticulation is present. In describing a picture, which is

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included in the appendix, Manuel said, “Uh, they are driving in cars and there’s a lot a traffic?”

Here, he pronounced the bolded “a” as in “Aidan” or “Asian,” which should be “of,” pronounced

as “schwa” in a native speaker’s speech. This mispronunciation is based off the fact that Manuel

tried to imitate this native-like pronunciation, but misinterpreted the coarticulation in native

speech, which caused him to incorrectly pronounce the word “of.” In this speech sample, Manuel

also pronounces “with” as “wif,” which is also how he wrote the word in the writing sample

described above, which can be attributed to the same explanation of the misinterpretation of

native speaker pronunciation. In a separate speech sample, the transcript of which can be found

in the appendix, Manuel also pronounced “outside” as “oukside” for the same reason.

Vowel confusion

In Manuel’s writing samples, found in the appendix, several instances of vowel confusion

were demonstrated. For the purpose of this study, vowel confusion is defined as the written

production of the incorrect vowel or combination of vowels in any given word. In his first

writing sample, Manuel wrote, “I im raening,” for, “I am running.” Here, two instances of vowel

confusion can be seen. For the word “am,” Manuel erroneously wrote “i” instead of “a.” Also,

instead of writing “u” in the word “running,” he wrote “ae.” These errors can be attributed to two

factors. First, Manuel’s L1 has a much simpler vowel system than English does, which explains

why he had trouble being able to produce the correct ones in English when writing. This factor,

that English’s vowel system is quite complex and each vowel can potentially make multiple

sounds, impacts the second explanation for Manuel’s errors in this instance. When he wrote “i,”

it is possible that Manuel was thinking of the vowel’s pronunciation as in the word “igloo,”

which in this case was confused with the correct vowel’s pronunciation. This confusion in the
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pronunciation difference between vowels is also a possible explanation for why Manuel wrote

“ae” instead of “u” in the word “running” as well.

In the same sample, Manuel again demonstrated errors involving vowels. Here, he wrote

the sentence, “it is rine octsod,” which should have been written as, “It is raining outside.” As far

as the vowel errors in this instance are concerned, there are two. He wrote “i” for “ai” in

“raining,” and he also wrote “o” for “i” in “side.” The explanation for these vowel errors can be

attributed to the same reason as the previous vowel errors, which is that Manuel seems to be

having trouble distinguishing between the sounds each individual vowel and vowel combination

(diphthong) make due to the English vowel system’s complexity compared to the system in his

home language.

The next writing sample contains three sentences, each with additional vowel errors. The

sentences containing vowel errors are, “I wot to pley wif my dar,” (I want to play with my dad.)

and, “Mis teeno is my fin,” which should say, “Miss Tina is my friend.” The vowel error in the

first sentence is the “e” in “play.” In this instance, Manuel demonstrates that he is experiencing

negative transfer from his L1. By writing “e” in “play,” Manuel wrote the Spanish vowel with

the closest pronunciation of the English “a” as pronounced in the word “play.” In the second

sentence, Manuel wrote my name with an “o” at the end where there should be an “a.” This

pronunciation of “a” presents an interesting pronunciation, because in English, it is pronounced

as the phoneme “schwa.” It is possible Manuel wrote an “o” because he was confused as to what

vowel corresponded to that sound in the word.

Tense and plural

With regard to tense errors, which are considered the use of the incorrect verb tense in the

context of this study, Manuel demonstrated a spoken example of this category of error. When
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telling me about a prior event that had happened in his class, Manuel said, “One day, some big

kids come, and we needed to wrote about a super hero.” Here, “come” should have been “came,”

and “wrote” should have been “write.” With the first tense error, Manuel should have used the

past tense, and the second word should have been in present tense. Instead, he reversed the tense

order of the two words, which demonstrates he hasn’t fully grasped this linguistic “formula”

quite yet, although meaning was not impeded in this instance.

Under this heading are also pluralization errors, which Manuel had two of in his oral

description of the picture discussed before. In his description, Manuel said, “There are painting

there and those persons are painting.” In this sample, he left off the -s morpheme on “painting”

while adding it to make “person” plural, which is actually an irregular plural that turns into

“people.” With this example, it appears that Manuel is beginning to acquire the plural

morpheme, but has not achieved a fully native-like domination of it yet.

Vocabulary

Another category identified in Manuel’s language use that contained errors was

vocabulary. This category deals with the misuse of or failure to produce certain words in the

context of a speech sample collected for this study. In the speech sample in which Manuel

described a picture, he referred to one of the characters in the drawing as a “girl kid.” The use of

this phrase does not imitate native-like speech, as most native speakers would describe the

character pictured, who is a female child inside a car with a female adult, as “little girl,” “the

lady’s daughter,” “the girl,” or some other variant. In another speech sample, when Manuel was

asking me to use a dry-erase marker, he could not produce the word “marker,” but rather

negotiated meaning by circumlocution and instead used the word “one” while indicating the
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marker I had. In this instance, a native speaker would have been able to produce the word, but

Manuel was still able to convey meaning without producing the vocabulary.

Needs Analysis

Based on the category Manuel had the most errors occur under, which was

misinterpretation of native-speaker pronunciation that translated to his writing, the first area in

which he could benefit from supplemental instruction would be spelling. As discussed in

Peregoy and Boyle’s chapter five on emergent literacy, although oral language is universally

acquired without much explicit instruction, literacy skills such as spelling require much more

practice to fully develop (Peregoy & Boyle, 2013). To make spelling more engaging and provide

motivation for students to write, according to Peregoy and Boyle, it is essential to highlight the

functions of writing. The authors contend that creating purposes for literacy helps students

understand how different forms of writing work. For Manuel, creating different activities based

on the ones suggested in the chapter, for example creating a play store and then filling out forms

to buy things or reading a book and then writing questions about it afterward, would be ways to

practice spelling in a meaningful way.

Also, by practicing spelling, Manuel’s pronunciation should also improve by noticing the

correct ways words are spelled. Although English spelling and pronunciation do not represent a

one-to-one relationship, words Manuel mispronounced in the samples could be pronounced

correctly if he noticed how they are correctly spelled and made a connection to their

pronunciations. Regarding the vowel confusion in Manuel’s spelling, Rayner notes that

American English has more than a dozen vowel sounds but not as many vowel letters, which

means that the same letters sometimes represent different pronunciations (Rayner, 2001). But, if
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Manuel is made aware of this characteristic of the language and practices spelling along with

corresponding pronunciations, he will learn and improve.

Another area Manuel should be instructed on based on his errors is vocabulary

development. To develop his vocabulary, I would recommend the use of the conditions for

learning proposed in Nation’s chapter 17 titled “Materials for Teaching Vocabulary.” The

conditions: noticing, retrieving, and elaborating, must be facilitated by the teacher. For example,

noticing can take place if the instructor places a specific word in bold type or gets students to

look up the definitions of words. Then, the student can retrieve the word if he or she remembers

either its definition or the word itself (Nation, 2014). This condition is similar to what Lightbown

and Spada suggest, which is that recognizing a certain word really exists is the first step to

learning it (Lightbown & Spada, 2011). After that, elaboration stretches the word’s meaning and

uses it in new contexts, which strengthens the student’s ability to actually learn it (Nation, 2014).

If Manuel’s instructors use this principle when teaching vocabulary words, his lexicon will grow.

Instead of having to negotiate meaning as described in the textbook’s chapter five and

demonstrated by his vocabulary-related errors, he will be able to communicate exactly what he

wants to say (Saville-Troike, 2017).

Conclusion

In this project, a study of Manuel’s language usage errors was conducted by collecting

samples of his written and spoken language during afterschool tutoring sessions during which

supplemental literacy instruction was provided. After finding that his errors could be categorized

into one of four categories, it was possible to explain why Manuel was making such errors, as

well as recommend areas in which he could receive additional instruction. Those were identified

as spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary development. By instructing Manuel in these specific

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areas using theories and methods proven successful by research, his English language skills will

improve.
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References

Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (2011). Learner Language. In How Languages Are Learned (pp. 77-
107). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nation, P. (2014). Materials for Teaching Vocabulary. In Developing Materials for Language
Teaching (pp. 351-364). New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Peregoy, S., & Boyle, O. (2013). Emergent Literacy: English Learners Beginning to Write and
Read. In Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL (pp. 170-221). Boston: Pearson
Education.

Rayner, K. (2001). How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading. Psychological
Science in the Public Interest, 2(2), 31-74.

Saville-Troike, M., & Barto, K. (2017). Social Contexts of Second Language Acquisition. In
Introducing Second Language Acquisition (Third ed., pp. 105-139). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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Appendix

Writing samples

#1

#2
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Picture referenced in Results

Transcript of speech samples

Me: Let’s talk about this picture. What’s happening in this picture?

Manuel: Uh, they are driving in cars and there’s a lot a traffic?

Me: And who’s in the car?

Manuel: A girl wif a girl kid and there is a car.

Me: Ok. And what’s happening in this building?

Manuel: Uh, you get pictures and get socks and toys. Things to put on your clothes. There are
painting there and those persons are painting. That’s it.
______________________________________________________________________________

Manuel: I want to write something about Spiderman. One day, some big kids come, and we
needed to wrote about a super hero.
______________________________________________________________________________

Asking to use a dry-erase marker to draw:

Manuel: I need a, uh, do you have a, uh, red, um one?

______________________________________________________________________________

Me: Ok, we’re gonna do a couple more sentences here. Ok, let’s read this.
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Manuel: They are running oukside.