Assignment One
Focus on the Learner
Submission date: July 16, 2013
Word count: 875 words
Learner profile
In order to complete this assignment I decided to observe one of the students from the elementary group. Her name is Diana. She is 21 years old. Her background is as follows: * Diana’s first language is Kazakh, but you can say that Russian is her first language as well, since at home she uses the first one, and for education – the second. She is fluent in both languages. * Diana still has one more year of university to go, she studies history and plans to continue her education with MA program. * Diana comes from a big family; she has 1 older brother and lots of male cousins. She is an active member of student
For use of be the following activity can be done:
Fruit basket.
Aim: To drill and produce correct form of be in sentences. It will be suitable for the student because it’s a social activity and she likes interaction, it’s also sufficient practice in both producing and listening, because then she will start to pay attention to how be is used and become more aware of it. In terms of personal support, I would ask her to go over the rule again, to put together a chart of how be is conjugated. After that I would ask her to name when be is used in the English language (e.g. to say who we are, where we are, how we feel, for weather, etc).
For word order:
Pair work and competition
Aim: To get Diana to structure sentence correctly, i.e. put subjects, verbs and objects where they belong. It is helpful because it is very visible and there will be a lot of controlled practice and drills that will model correct structuring. In terms of my support, I would start with a warmer, elicit what subject, verb, object, etc. is on an example of a sentence earlier provided by class. Then elicit that in English the sentence structure is very set and we cannot swap words. Write “I ride a bicycle” and compare it with “Bicycle rides me.” Then pair Diana with a student with strong sentence building