1. REFLECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING
LANGUAGE TASK 2
SAMPLES FOR ANALYSIS
Sonia Jimenez

2. Language Task 2 Sample 1 Syntax
“Teacher, I already did a very complicated word.”
Context: The teacher asked the class to spell some words.

3. Language Task 2
Sample 1 Comment: Although she used a wrong collocation (did … word), the sample exhibited a good management of sentence structure (S + adv + V + O), even with adverbial modification (already). Spanish has a freer distribution for adverbs within the sentence (Swan & Smith, 1987, p. 79), whose interference would cause an ungrammatical English sentence. Therefore, this student shows solid learning of word order in simple present tense in English, including the position of frequency adverbs, which means that he can make reference to common aspects of everyday living. Nevertheless, he needs to improve the use of collocations.

4. Language Task 2
Sample 2 Lexis “I laugh of the videos that I see in YouTube.” Correction: “I laugh at the videos that I watch on YouTube.” Context: Upon request, the student made a sentence with the verb “laugh.”

5. Language Task 2
Sample 2 Comment: This is a case of interference, as in Spanish the verb “reír” (laugh) collocates with the preposition “de” (of) to introduce a prepositional object. In English the collocating preposition is “at.” This learner still relies on his L1 schemata and on L1 verb-preposition collocation.

6. Language Task 2
Sample 3 Pronunciation “Laugh, laugh, laugh” [‘lag] Correction: [‘laf] Context: A student was trying to pronounce the verb “laugh” in isolation.

7. Language Task 2
Sample 3 Comment: This is a case of Spanish interference, where the letter “h” is mostly silent and does not appear in syllable-final position. English and Spanish have different sound-letter correspondences (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010, p. 419); thus, this student is still unaware of the association between the English phoneme /f/ and the spelling pattern “gh”. In the same way, there may also be a problem with the pronunciation of “although”, with a different association between the same spelling pattern that is silent \ȯl-ˈthō\. This type of errors needs to be addressed explicitly in class to make the students aware of the differences.

8. Language samples to analyse
People need to recognize their addiction, accept they need to change and get help.
I can go to the bathroom?
My brother has three kids.
My mother’s name’s is …
I am in five semester.
There were couples foreign.
We like play soccer.
We want to improve our notes.
How do you say a person who is very nice and very strict?
I feel butterflies in the stomach when I know a person.