The document analyzes the errors made by a 19-year old Russian ELL student and compares Russian and English languages. [It summarizes that] the student made errors with capitalization, grammar, and punctuation that were likely due to interference from her native Russian language, which does not use articles or capitalize the first-person pronoun. It also finds that Russian uses different intonation patterns and verb conjugations than English. The document provides instructional implications for teachers to understand students' first languages and use various techniques to help ELLs improve their English skills.

1. Language Comparison
AN OVERVIEW OF DATA ANALYSIS JOURNAL
AND LANGUAGE COMPARISON PAPER
BY: NICHOLENE ALLEN

2. Information of ELL
 19-year-old female Russian student studying to
become an economist
 Lives in the town of Novgorod, which is very old
 Began studying English a few years ago; considers
herself at the intermediate level
 Would like to learn more English, especially slang
with which she is not familiar

3. Errors Encountered
 Capitalization- not capitalizing the personal pronoun
“I” (nine total)
 Grammar- errors in deleting articles before nouns (six
errors), using conjunctions to begin a sentence (four
errors), and using the wrong verb tense (two errors)
(twelve total)
 Punctuation- using a comma instead of a question mark
(one time)
 22 errors total

4. Summary of Errors
 Unfortunately, the Russian ELL with whom I was
communicating stopped responding to my e-mails.
 Therefore, more errors should have been collected.
 I analyzed the Russian language and based on
research found that most errors were made because
of interference from the L1 language.

5. Language Comparison
 Features of Russian:
-alphabet is Cyrillic and contains 33 letters
-can be written using block writing or cursive
writing, which almost all Russians use
-general rules to follow for capitalization: days and
weeks are not capitalized; personal pronoun “I” (looks
like a backwards “R” in English) is not capitalized
unless it starts a sentence
-only three spelling rules to learn
(“Learn-Russia,” 2010)

6. Language Comparison
Russian English
 Alphabet is Cyrillic and has 33 letters (“Learn-  Alphabet is Latin-based and has 26 letters
Russia,” 2010)
 Some letters are similar in Russian such
 Some letters are similar in English such as “A”,
“O”, “C”, “T”, and “B” (“Learn-Russia,” 2010)
as “A”, “O”, “C”, “T”, and “B”.
 Does NOT have a fixed word order  Does have a fixed word order
 Has only 5 vowel sounds  Has 12 vowel sounds and 8 diphthongs
 Does not distinguish between short and long  Does distinguish between short and long
vowel sounds vowel sounds
 Has similar number of consonants but does not  Has similar number of consonants but
produce certain sounds such as /th/ in English
does produce different sounds such /th/
 Uses falling intonation when asking questions
(pragmatics)  Uses rising intonation when asking
 Verb system focuses on actions either being questions (pragmatics)
completed or not completed through the use of affixes  Uses various verb forms without the use of
on the verbs affixes on the verb stem
 Does not use auxiliaries  Uses auxiliaries
 Does not use articles
 Uses articles
(Shoebottom, 2011)
 (Shoebottom, 2011)

7. Difficulties Russian ELLs Encounter While Acquiring English
 Because English has a different alphabet system and uses a fixed word order, ELLs
may have trouble communicating and writing in English.
 ELLs may have difficulty in pronouncing vowel sounds since more exist in the
English language than in their L1.
 ELLs may have trouble pronouncing certain phonemes because some are not used
in Russia, such as /th/.
 Because Russians ask questions using falling intonation, English natives may view
this as being rude.
 Russians may have difficulty writing English because the verb tenses vary greatly
from one language to the other; Russians do not use auxiliaries as in the example of
the ELL with which I communicated: “I travel to Finland next year.” The auxiliary
“will” is omitted.
 Interference from the L1 may also cause ELLs to not capitalize certain letters, such
as the personal pronoun “I”. The ELL communicated to me several examples of her
not using a capital “I” as in this example: “…i don’t have time to read.”
 ELLs may omit articles when writing since they do not use them in the Russian
language. An example includes: “It is very old town.” The article “a” is missing
before “very.”

8. Insight Gained from Research
 After learning more about the Russian language, I found
interference was the reason why the ELL I
communicated with made most of her errors in English
writing.
 Some errors, such as starting sentences with
conjunctions, may be developmental since they cannot be
explained by L1 interference.
 Educators should be proactive-It is useful to read about an
ELL’s cultural background to gain insight into the various
aspects involving the
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
of an L1 language system.

9. Instructional Implications
 Teachers need to find out about students’ L1
language backgrounds in order to be aware of errors
students may make in the speaking, reading, and
writing of English because of interference.
 Teachers can look at CAN DO descriptors to be
aware of errors that are developmental.
 To help students acquire English, it is important for
teachers to teach phonemic awareness by providing
them with meaningful activities through the use of
games, poems, songs, and technology (Antunez, 2002).

10. Instructional Implications
 To teach students vocabulary, it is important for
educators to teach new words explicitly while also
exposing students to the vocabulary in a variety of
contexts (i.e. books of various genres, role-playing
activities, newspaper and internet articles, etc.)
(Antunez, 2002).
 To aid in ELLs’ comprehension of texts, it is imperative to
use visuals and talk about what is happening in a story (i.e.
using graphic organizers, “thinking aloud” while reading to
students, discussing aspects of language such as sarcasm and
figures of speech, etc.) (Antunez, 2002).

11. Instructional Implications
 It is important for teachers to constantly encourage
students to speak, read, and write English by
building their confidence; allowing students to
participate in meaningful activities that focus on
content over form will encourage ELLs to use
English on a daily basis (Antunez, 2002).
 Educators must also continually assess students to
monitor progress and evaluate what teaching
methods are working and ones that need to be
altered to benefit the learning process for ELLs.

12. References
Antunez, Beth. (2002). English language learners and the five essential components of
reading instruction. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/341/
Learn-Russia. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.learn-russia.com/lessons/alphabet.php
Shoebottom, Paul. (2011). The differences between English and Russian. Retrieved from
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/russian.htm