Fieldwork Journal Week 2 Introduction: To begin, Mrs. Peterson’s second grade class has about 17-20 students in it. A majority of the students are girls with only a few boys. She has about 3 or 4 “EL” (English Learner) students and over half of her class are lower reading level and lower performing students. Her class is also a “SpEd” combo which means that some of her students have IEP’s (Individual Education Plans) alongside her English Language Learners. On the agenda for January 24th, 2019, I observed Mrs. Peterson begin class with high-frequency word practice. After, the students broke into their reading rotations, and then onto STAR testing. For high-frequency words, they were given a worksheet to complete during rotations. Some of the high-frequency words the students were focusing on included: above, different, few, they, which, began, enough, grow, were and why. On the back of the worksheet, the focus was on phonics, specifically the vowels “oi” together. Student Observations/Miscellaneous: I sat down with a student named Zoey to work on high-frequency words. We worked on the sentence: “The small plane flew above our town”. She had to sound out the word “small” after originally pronouncing it incorrectly. When finding the blank for the sentence “The man ____ to run after that big dog growled”, she took her time on the word “man”, especially sounding out the letter “M”. Anna was reading a chapter book called “The Kidnapped King”. She reads extremely well at this level and is reading at a very fast pace. However, she got stuck on the word “touch” for “touch football”. I learned that Anna is a student who graduated out of “EL”, she did not speak English before. I would have never guessed. A student named June is from Japan, so English is completely new to her in speaking, reading and writing. She was writing words that begin with “L” on a piece of paper and speaking them to Mrs. Peterson. One of the words she had the hardest time with was lɛts. She kept pronouncing it as lɪts. She also got stuck on the word “looking” and would say the root word first, then the suffix and put them together to sound it out. She also learned for the first time what the sound “f” made. Mispronounced consonant sounds: wɪf/instead of wɪð, rɑ/instead of ɑr, gʌt/instead of ɪŋg, laɪt/instead of laɪf, kaʊtɜr/instead of ˈkwɔrtər, wɔrɛfk^h/instead of wɜrk, sɪns/instead of ˈsaɪəns, snɪflɛs/instead of ˈsnɪfəlz, dɜr/instead of ðɛr Mispronounced vowel sounds: tərɔrs/instead of ˈtutərz, plæn/instead of pleɪn, oʊər/instead of ˈaʊər Sentence-level problems: Working with June, an EL student, I found many sentence formation issues. However, most of the other students in her class had them as well. These included: “More harder” instead of “harder”, “What a big noise those drum makes” instead of “What a big noise those drumS make_”, “teached” instead of the past tense “taught” Speaking habits: Most of the EL learners h.

1. Fieldwork Journal Week 2
Introduction:
To begin, Mrs. Peterson’s second grade class has about 17-20
students in it. A majority of
the students are girls with only a few boys. She has about 3 or 4
“EL” (English Learner) students
and over half of her class are lower reading level and lower
performing students. Her class is also
a “SpEd” combo which means that some of her students have
IEP’s (Individual Education Plans)
alongside her English Language Learners. On the agenda for
January 24th, 2019, I observed Mrs.
Peterson begin class with high-frequency word practice. After,
the students broke into their
reading rotations, and then onto STAR testing. For high-
frequency words, they were given a
worksheet to complete during rotations. Some of the high-
frequency words the students were
focusing on included: above, different, few, they, which, began,
enough, grow, were and why. On
the back of the worksheet, the focus was on phonics,
specifically the vowels “oi” together.
Student Observations/Miscellaneous:
I sat down with a student named Zoey to work on high-
frequency words. We worked on
the sentence: “The small plane flew above our town”. She had
to sound out the word “small”
after originally pronouncing it incorrectly. When finding the
blank for the sentence “The man
____ to run after that big dog growled”, she took her time on

2. the word “man”, especially
sounding out the letter “M”.
Anna was reading a chapter book called “The Kidnapped
King”. She reads extremely
well at this level and is reading at a very fast pace. However,
she got stuck on the word “touch”
for “touch football”. I learned that Anna is a student who
graduated out of “EL”, she did not
speak English before. I would have never guessed.
A student named June is from Japan, so English is completely
new to her in speaking,
reading and writing. She was writing words that begin with “L”
on a piece of paper and speaking
them to Mrs. Peterson. One of the words she had the hardest
time with was lɛts. She kept
pronouncing it as lɪts. She also got stuck on the word “looking”
and would say the root word
first, then the suffix and put them together to sound it out. She
also learned for the first time what
the sound “f” made.
Mispronounced consonant sounds:
wɪf/instead of wɪð, rɑ/instead of ɑr, gʌt/instead of ɪŋg,
laɪt/instead of laɪf, kaʊtɜr/instead of
ˈkwɔrtər, wɔrɛfk^h/instead of wɜrk, sɪns/instead of ˈsaɪəns,
snɪflɛs/instead of ˈsnɪfəlz, dɜr/instead
of ðɛr
Mispronounced vowel sounds:
tərɔrs/instead of ˈtutərz, plæn/instead of pleɪn, oʊər/instead of
ˈaʊər
Sentence-level problems:
Working with June, an EL student, I found many sentence
formation issues. However, most of
the other students in her class had them as well. These included:

3. “More harder” instead of “harder”, “What a big noise those
drum makes” instead of “What a big
noise those drumS make_”, “teached” instead of the past tense
“taught”
Speaking habits:
Most of the EL learners had troubles with their “s” consonant
sounds. Instead of using their
tongue to pronounce the “s” sound, a lot of the time they would
pronounce them using the “ð”
sound for many words like books, small, etc.
Reflection:
One common problem I noticed within this class as a whole was
pronouncing their “S” sounds at
the end of words when it is used as a suffix. Most of the time,
the words with “S” as a suffix
would be pronounced as “th”, almost like speaking with a lisp.
The students also struggle with
past tense vocabulary and regularly use present tense when
speaking or writing. Overall, they
seemed to make progress when corrected by Mrs. P.
Fieldwork Journal Week 3
Introduction/Agenda:
I was back at Knob Hill Elementary this week. On the
agenda for January 31st, 2019, Mrs. Peterson had her normal
schedule going with reading rotations and word builders when I
walked in. However, today they began with a GoNoodle
program which is a tool used by the school and Mrs. Peterson
that is educational and fun for the students. Every time I have
observed the students getting ready for a GoNoodle activity

4. they always get very animated and excited. This activity was on
the whiteboard when I walked in and students were able to
touch and interact with it on the board. Mrs. Peterson would call
the students up one by one to use the word application which
has words that it speaks out loud by an electronic voice, letter
by letter, and the kids unscramble and spell the words out when
it is their turn. After the GoNoodle activity, it was time for
reading rotations/groups where the students break into different
reading stations which have different work/activities at each of
them. One of them is in a group with Mrs. Peterson for closer,
individualized attention.
Individual Student Interactions:
I sat down with June, an EL learning student from Japan to
practice her reading and pronunciations. When reading, we had
to go over the letter “e” and the sounds it makes. After some
practice, June started to recognize the sound of “e” correctly
when reading through a full sentence. She struggled with the
word “sports” and mistook the “o” for an “i” and read it as the
word “spritz”. She also had a hard time with “ch-il”
combination in the world “children”. When reading the
beginning of the sentence “This is my house.”, she struggles
with “th” in the word “this”, she says it with a “d” instead of
“th” as “dis” but does not put a lot of effort or annunciation on
the “d” sound. I chose a few words and practiced sounding out
the “th” with her and told her to stick out/use her tongue when
trying to pronounce it. She did a lot better practicing with her
tongue protruding forward between her teeth this time. June has
a lot of spelling issues as well and has a hard time forming
sentences that make sense. I also noticed she struggles with
suffixes on verbs to make them action verbs. For example, she
did not know how to take the word “walk” and make it into
“walk-ing”.
I sat down with Mrs. Peterson, Grant and Sophia, another ELL
student and we read a book about the wind. The two students
were asked to point out words in the story that make the “ow”

5. sound as in the word, “how”. This “ow” sound is a spelling
pattern that they are studying for the week. According to Mrs.
Peterson, Grant and Sophia were both test for Special Ed,
Sophia did not qualify but Grant did, however he has a high IQ.
Mispronounced vowel sounds:
· June: Ru/instead of rul, dʌ/instead of ði, sɪts/instead of sɛt,
ˈhɔˌkaɪ/ instead of ˈhɑki, oʊ/ instead of ʌ, kʌ/ instead of ʧ, kɪn/
instead of kæn, hoʊ/ instead of haʊ, oʊʌld/ instead of oʊld
· Other Students: ɛl/ instead of ɔl, toʊt/ instead of tɔt, kwɛstʌn/
instead of ˈkwɛsʧən
Mispronounced consonant sounds:
· June: ʧʌldrɪŋ and ʧɜrdrən/ instead of ˈʧɪldrən, ˈsɪtəsənz/
instead of ˈsɪtəzənz, ʃwip/ instead of swip
· Other students: ˈfaɪ/ instead of flaɪ, noʊdeɪz/ instead of
ˈnaʊədeɪz
Speaking habits:
Most of the ELL students had similar issues with
pronouncing “th” sound in words because they were not using
their tongue primarily when trying to say it. When reading, a lot
of them would leave letters out of words, making them an entire
new word all together. For example, June was reading “The
duck was swimming” as “The duke was swimming”. When
trying to turn the word “walk” into “walking”, she would say
the suffix, “king”, first and leave out “walk” entirely. Another
student, Grant, would say “no-days” and leave out the “w” from
the word, “nowadays”.
Reflection:
Due to this being a lower performing and Special Ed
combo class, I am able to see a lot of different habits and
pronunciations from the students. One of the most prominent
issues I have found is the pronunciation of the diagraph, “th” as
well as the suffix “-tion” on words. Most students will say it
with a “d” or an “t” sound for “-tion”. They also seemed to

6. struggle a lot with the “long O” sound in some words. Overall,
when corrected by me, or when working together with Mrs.
Peterson, most of these issues are corrected, at least for the time
being.
Oliver 1
Lauren Oliver

7. Professor Mary Sorola
Language Structure and Acquisition
11 December 2018
Case Study
ESL Reading and Writing Course
Introduction:
On 11/6 and 11/27, I visited an advanced ESL class at
Evergreen Valley College, taught
by professor Michelle Henninger. This reading and writing
course has about twenty students,
most of whom are Asian, but some are Hispanic or Middle-
Eastern. The students in this class
seem very motivated to learn English in a integrative (wanting
to assimilate and fit in with our
culture [O'Grady et. al. 412]) way; one female student in
particular was sad that the semester is
coming to a close, and expressed her desire to take more ESL
classes in the winter session to
keep up her practice. Because they have that strong desire to
learn English, the students don't
speak to one another in their own language very often, but
rather use the breaks and time before

8. and after class to do that. The full immersion in English during
the class time seemed very
helpful for their learning and forced them to problem-solve in
English rather than reverting back
to their native languages for discussion.
Description, Evaluation, and Analysis:
A mistake I noticed in my observations was students using
present tense verbs when they
really meant to use past tense verbs. In my first visit, one
student said “I write one page” when
she meant “I wrote one page,” and in my second visit, a student
said “they cannot” instead of
Oliver 2
“they could not.” Occasionally this happened in the other class I
visited, as well, and I think it is
just a matter of practicing and getting used to the internal
changes vs. suffixes that turn present
tense verbs into past tense (127, 142-143).
Additionally, the students in this class would frequently
mispronounce the /ð/ or /θ/
sounds as the /t/, /d/, or /z/ sounds. Some examples I noticed

9. were /tɞɹzde/ instead of /θɞɹzde/,
/də/ instead of /ðə/, /nɑtin/ instead of /nəθiŋ/, /cloz/ instead of
/cloðz/, and /noɹt/ instead of /noɹθ/.
This is probably due to phonological transfer, which occurs
when language learners transfer
some of the features or aspects of their first language to their
interlanguage grammar, and then to
their second language (391); most Asian languages (and
languages in general) don't have the /ð/
or /θ/ sounds, which are considered marked and can pose a
learning curve to English language
learners (396-398).
Also, some students had issues adding appropriate suffixes to
plural nouns and past or
present tense verbs, such as in the phrases “the tax” instead of
“taxes,” “the economy very crowd
fast” instead of “the economy got crowded very fast,” “they
relies” instead of “they rely,” “to
village” instead of “to villages,” “the church are making part of
this” instead of “churches are
participating in this,” “they build church” instead of “they build
churches,” and “church are
helping” instead of “churches are helping.” After some
research, I learned that the Chinese

10. language doesn't usually mark singular vs. plural nouns, but
rather they are supposed to be
inferred from context, which may be why some students had a
problem with this (Guo).
Another big linguistic feature common to these students was
dropping off consonant
sounds at the end of words. Some examples I noticed were /en/
instead of /ænd/, /ʃydɪn/ instead
of /ʃydɪnt/, /nɑ/ instead of /nɑt/, /kɑ/ instead of /kɑz/, /don/
instead of /dont/, and /wɑɪ/ instead of
Oliver 3
/wɑɪt/. Most Asian words and syllables don't end in consonant
sounds, except sometimes in /n/ or
/ŋ/, which is why I suspect that this is another example of
phonological transfer (O'Grady et. al.
400).
Furthermore, I noticed some issues with stressed vs. unstressed
syllables. One examples I
found was:
u / u instead of / u u
prɛdətɹ prɛdətɹ

11. After some research, I discovered that Chinese and most other
Asian languages do not
have particular rules on stressing or unstressing syllables,
which is why it can be difficult for
second language learners to conform to the English rules
(“Comparison of English and Chinese
(Suprasegmentals”).
Finally, these students occasionally pronounced the /ɪ/ sound as
the /i/ sound, like in /bizi/
instead of /bɪzi/, /intɹodəkʃɪn/ instead of /ɪntɹodəkʃɪn/, /in/
instead of /ɪn/, and /ðis/ instead of
/ðɪs/.
ESL Listening and Speaking Course
Introduction:
On 11/13 and 12/4, I visited a novice-high ESL class at
Evergreen Valley College, taught
by professor Erika Lawson. This listening and speaking course
has about fifteen students, most
of whom are Asian (particularly Vietnamese), but a couple are
Filipino or Hispanic. Surprisingly,
the students often speak in their native languages to each other,
rather than attempting to

12. complete activities or exercises in English, and frequently speak
over the instructor. I suspect that
most of the students possess instrumental motivation to learn
English, perhaps to complete a
Oliver 4
college degree or get a job they need (O'Grady et. al. 412); but
because they already have a
strong community of people speaking their native language,
they aren't very motivated to learn
English for personal or conforming reasons. Unfortunately,
because of this, I noticed that the
students would make the same mistakes over and over again,
even after being corrected by the
instructor.
Description, Evaluation, and Analysis:
As with the other class, these students tend to drop off the last
consonants of a word,
some examples being hɑɪki/ instead of /hɑɪkiŋ/, /kɑɹ/ instead of
/kɑɹd/, /wek/ instead of /weks/,
/spo/ instead of /spoɹts/, and /fɑɪ/ instead of /fɑɪv/. Due to the
high percentage of Asian students
in this class, I would suspect the same underlying reason for

13. this common problem.
Additionally, one young, female Philipino student had a good
American accent but tended
to slur her words. Some examples I noticed were /ɪs/ instead of
/ɪts/, and /səd3ɛkt/ instead of
/səbd3ɛkt/. Some examples of slurred words from the other
students were /wɪ/ instead of /wɪθ/,
/bɛkfɪst/ instead of /bɹɛkfɪst/, /kwɛʃɜns/ instead of /kwɛstʃɪns/,
/gɹændfɑɹ/ instead of /gɹændfɑðɛɹ/,
and /dɑdə/ instead of /dɑdəɹ/. I think that if the students slowed
down and made the effort to
enunciate each individual sound, as opposed to rushing through
words and sentences, their
speech would be much less slurred and more clear.
A syntactical issue I noticed was constructing a sentence like
“Subject – verb –
preposition – gerund” instead of “Subject – verb – gerund” or
“Subject – verb – preposition –
present tense verb.” Some examples I noticed include “go to
shopping” instead of “going
shopping,” “we like to soccer and going fishing” instead of “we
like to play soccer and go
fishing,” and “we like to drinking coffee” instead of “we like
drinking coffee.” There were also

14. Oliver 5
some difficulties with remembering to put prepositions in the
right sentences and using the
appropriate prepositions in context, such as “listening song”
instead of “listening to a song,” “on
a desk” instead of “at a desk,” “go to home” instead of “go
home,” and “what do you watch
TV?” instead of “what do you watch on TV?”.
Next Steps
Based on the information I've gathered and processed from
visiting these two separate
classes, I would suggest the following next steps for the
students' English language learning:
1. Consider their personal motivation for learning English and,
if possible, increase
intrinsic and integrative motivation by visualizing how they will
be able to fit into the
American culture better once they become more proficient in
English.
2. Practice the internal changes and added suffixes that turn
present tense verbs into past

15. tense and singular nouns into plural nouns, by reading, writing,
and speaking in English.
3. Learn how to physically produce the /ð/ and /θ/ sounds by
watching tutorial videos,
working personally with the instructor, and listening to others
speaking English.
4. Practice ending words with consonant sounds and, when
possible, thinking about the
syllables in ways that make more sense to their native language
(e.g. “God is” can be
thought of as /Gɑ dɪz/ by Chinese speakers).
5. Learn the purpose and significance of stressed vs. unstressed
syllables and how they
differ from, for examples, tones used in the Chinese language;
additionally, practice
putting the correct stress on each syllable by speaking English,
and practice marking
which syllables were stressed after listening to someone else
speak English.
6. Review proper grammar and syntax of sentences, especially
those which contain
Oliver 6

16. gerunds, present participle verbs, or prepositions.
7. Practice speaking more clearly without slurring or omitting
sounds entirely.
Oliver 7
Work Cited
“Comparison of English and Chinese (Suprasegmentals).” The
Education University of Hong
Kong, A Corpus-Based English Pronunciation Learning
Website, ec-
concord.ied.edu.hk/phonetics_and_phonology/wordpress/?page_
id=443.
Guo, Philip J. “Common English Mistakes Made by Native
Chinese Speakers.” Philip J. Guo,
Dec. 2008, www.pgbovine.net/chinese-english-mistakes.htm.
O'Grady, William, et al., editors. Contemporary Linguistics: An
Introduction. 7th ed., Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2017.