Assignment 1 Part A

Kabir Aswani 1. The range of ages and nationalities

The current batch which Im teaching consists of South Indian citizens with the exception of Maria, who is Spanish. The ages vary from 21 to 50.

2. Background and motivation for learning English Most students consist of unemployed youth looking for jobs, students pursuing their post graduate degrees and employed professionals. A few students who I spoke with want to improve their English because they want to be able to have a social conversation without embarrassing themselves.

Some want to travel abroad and have to improve their English before they can attempt the IELTS. One student is doing an MBA and plans to take over his fathers business. His father deals with various clients and this student wants to learn English so that he can manage these clients. Another student wants to do a Doctorate in Electronics from Oxford and needs to improve his English. Others want to improve their written skills as they send e-mails to foreign clients. A few mentioned that their English needs to sound better over the telephone and would like to be able to put forth their views effectively during corporate meetings.

Most students come from very humble backgrounds and arent exposed to the English language. They want to improve their English so that they can get a job and support their families.

3. Previous English learning experience A majority of the students have been educated in Tamil, with English being their second language. Others said that they started learning English in their college days. A student called Saud said that he took to speaking English only when he began to pursue his MBA. I have noticed that students are able to read English texts but do not speak very fluently because they are often surrounded by Tamil speaking people and do not have a chance to use their English speaking skills.

4. Apparent preferred learning styles Howard Gardener has suggested that people could have seven intelligences (maybe more!)

From the learning styles hand-out that was given to each participant, we concluded that the primary learning style for all the participants is visual. The secondly learning style for a majority of the participants is the kinaesthetic style.

5. Needs and interests

Assignment 1 Part A

Kabir Aswani

According to James Scrivener in Learning Teaching, Its tempting for a teacher to view a class as a fairly homogeneous group with a single level and similar behaviour, preferences, interests and ways of working.

Most of the participants hail from South India. There is a problem with their vowel sounds. Students replace long vowel sounds with the short ones and vice-versa. A teacher needs to work on vowel sounds with this group. Candidates said that they were interested in learning the basic rules of English. Others wanted to learn the phonetic script and the article systems. A few others wrote in their need analysis sheets that they were interested in learning about the British Culture, while others wanted to learn how to read magazines.

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