Gabriella is a 20-year-old Spanish-speaking English language learner from Miami who experiences linguistic challenges in her daily communication. These challenges stem from direct translations from her native Spanish to English, which result in errors in morphology, phonology, and semantics. Specifically, she struggles with word forms and tenses, pronunciation of certain English sounds, and conveying the intended meaning of words. Through analysis of her speech, it is clear that semantic errors are most common, as she relies on Spanish translations. With continued English practice and acquisition of more advanced vocabulary, her language skills will likely continue improving over time.

1. Meghan Shephard
TAL506R
11/13/12
Linguistic Challenges of English Language Learners:
A case study
Introduction:
English language learners (ELLs) experience significant linguistic challenges
when forced to speak the language in order to function in our current American
Society. Although the United States government has not legally made English the
national language, it is still wide spread to the point where it is difficult to have
upward social mobility without knowing basic English. As unfair as this is, it is the
current state of our society and can serve as our critique that our society makes
against English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Consequently, we will be
discussing the points of error in language experienced by ELLs. More specifically, we
will be focusing on the sensitivity of phonology, morphology, and semantics in
language. Sounds in speech are something commonly focused on with ELLs. Their
accents tend to affect the function of certain sounds in language, resulting in
linguistic challenges in English. In addition to the importance of how language is
verbalized through speech, we must acknowledge the importance of understanding
word structure. Word structure stems from morphemes, which are the minimal unit
of meaning or grammar in language. When ELLs translate from their primary
language to that of their second language (English), we see that morphemes may be
redistributed incorrectly due to their significantly distinct use in their first language.
This can, in turn, affect the meaning of words which is primarily the point of
communication, which consequently proves challenging in the linguistic field. When
combined, phonology, morphology, and semantics create a majority of sources for
linguistic errors in ELLs. Their inextricably related nature forces ESOL to master all

2. three categories, making English a phonetically challenging and grammatically
intimidating language.
Subject:
Gabriella is a twenty-year-old student at the University of Miami. She is a
senior working towards graduating with her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology with a
minor in Human Social Development. Gabriella has been living in the states since
she was seven years of age. Her mother speaks only Spanish due to a poor
management of the English language. She currently lives with her family in the
Midtown/Wynwood area and uses the Metrorail system to commute. Gabriella is a
native Spanish speaker, with two older brothers and one younger brother.
Interestingly enough, her oldest brother has exceptionally good English despite
having the least amount of experience with English in regards to number of years
spoken. Her second oldest brother, on the contrary, has poor English and struggles
with his accent. Similarly, Gabriella has a thick accent stemming from her Puerto
Rican and Dominican descent. Like her second oldest brother, Gabriella struggles
daily with stuttering, tripping over her words, mispronunciation, and language
confidence overall. As a student at the University of Miami and as a tutor for
America Reads, she consistently confronts her own English language errors when
others misunderstand her direction, presentation, questions, etc. in class or at work.
Unfortunately, this has severely affected her self-esteem, but she works daily on
improving her speech, handling of word forms, and usage of words to convey
messages. She tells me that her youngest brother has perfect English and Spanish,
leaving her jealous of his ability to fluctuate fluidly between both languages.
When asked of she would mind participating in my linguistic project, she said
she did not mind. However, she was curious as to what linguistics was and how she

3. was related to my studies. I explained to her the significance of linguistic errors in
the daily process of communication for ELLs, such as herself. She asked me if I too
was regarded as an ELL, and I told her that was a great question. Similar to
Gabriella’s case, I do struggle daily with the phonology, morphology, and semantics
of the English Language. Although my accent is not nearly as strong as hers, both she
and I still are addressed when we mistakenly pronounce syllabically complex words,
or when we incorrectly change the tense of a word by adding an unneeded morph,
or when we the meaning of our word is incorrect because we translated a cognate
from English to Spanish. These are only three examples of the infinite amount of
mistakes we both make in linguistics, adding to the list of errors of ELLs.
Coding of Data (Table 1.0) and Analysis of Data:
As a precursor to the actual analysis of Gabriella’s linguistic errors, I would
like to preface that in the morphological area, I will be concentrating on
morphemes; in the phonological area, I will be concentrating on pronunciation; in
the semantic area, I will be concentrating on word meaning.
When we sat down to begin our recorded conversation, Gabriella was
nervous at first, cautious of what she said and how she was saying it. As the dialogue
continued, she realized that there was nothing extraordinary about our
conversation content and visibly relaxed. We continued to talk, touching upon
topics such as brothers, Halloween Costumes, her travels, and relationships. After
listening to our recorded conversation, I created a table dividing the three
categories of errors that Gabriella exemplified throughout the recording. It is
evident that her primary language is used to translate into English for the majority
of sentences she communicates.

4. In the category of morphological errors, Gabriella demonstrated overuse of
morpheme stems also known as free morphemes. She focused on using basic words
that did not need additional bound morphemes. However, when she did use bound
morphemes, she would forget the inflective possessive and replace it with the word
is. The linguistic error originates from the Spanish verb ‘estar’ meaning ‘to be’.
Gabriella seemingly translated the ‘estar’ from Spanish, which equates to the free,
functional morpheme ‘is’. In essence, "estar" convey’s possession, thus through
incorrect translation, results in her omission of the possessive inflectional
morpheme. For example, instead of saying, “It is gone” or “It’s gone”, Gabriella would
say, “is gone”.
In the category of phonological errors, it is clear that Spanish is her first
language. As previously mentioned, Gabriella’s accent is thick but not unintelligible.
Therefore, the sources of the pronunciation errors are clear. As is demonstrated in
the table, her linguistic errors in phonology originate from certain places and
manners of articulation of consonants that are not employed in Spanish. For
example, the word ‘costume’ sounds like ‘costoon’ due to a lack of the use of voiced
bilabial nasals in word final position in Spanish.
Finally, the category with the most noted linguistics errors was that of
semantics. Gabriella demonstrated a clear use of translation from Spanish to English
when it comes to word meaning. Two prime examples caught from the recording
support this claim and exemplify Spanish interference. First, when describing her
travels to the Dominican Republic, Gabriella stated, “We haven’t been there since for
two years.” She clearly translated “No hemos estado allí desde dos anos atrás.” The
word ‘desde’, meaning ‘since’, was retained in the English sentence while still using
the English word for this property, ‘for’. Consequently, the English translation of the

5. sentence retains both the direct Spanish translation and the rule she learned for
English, resulting in the combination of “since for”. Second, the Spanish bound
morpheme of ‘ito’ is used to exemplify when something is either little in size or
small in value. When Gabriella was explaining the low frequency in which she had
boyfriends when she was younger, she translated from the Spanish phrase “Si logre
tener un enamoradito”. Gabriella meant to say in English that “I managed to have a
boyfriend, but he wasn’t important.” Instead she said, “I managed to have a little
boyfriend. The fact that Gabriella knew she wanted to convey her boyfriend of low
significance but rather conveyed a boyfriend of small size, means that she translated
directly from Spanish to English. Ultimately, the speaker understands from the
context of the conversation that the boyfriend was not actually little in stature, but
rather he was low in importance.
Conclusion:
Although the chart shows a diverse range of errors in all three categories, the
majority of Gabriella’s errors in this conversation and throughout others are in the
semantic category. Her handle on word meaning is still actively worked on as she
acquires more vocabulary, especially vocabulary of higher diction in English, which
she seems to be lacking currently. Although there were not too many morphological
errors, it is attributed to her avoidance of words that have multiple morphemes.
This may be due to her smaller knowledge base in units of grammar such as prefixes
and suffixes that affect tenses and time change. Although her phonological errors
were not as distracting as the others, her pronunciation can still be improved.
Generally speaking, Gabriella aria is a high-leveled ELL who speaks through
translations of her primary language, Spanish, to that of her secondary language,
English. In time and with more experience in the professional work place, Gabriella

6. will find more opportunities and resources to improve her English if she sees
necessary or desires to do so. Through this case study, it is blaringly clear that
linguistic errors can be attributed to language interference and direct translations.

7. Table 1.0
Morphological Phonological Semantic
“Okay is gone”  Okay it’s
gone
* Incorrectly used the bound
possessive inflective
morpheme
Cheapest = sheep-est
*Spanish does not employ
the voiceless palatal
affricate in word initial
position
“We started buying the
bags, for the plane, the
luggage”
*Unsure of which word was
correct, Maria used both
“bag” and “luggage” to
convey the same message
“If something happen to
me, I didn’t tell her at all”
 If something happened
to me, I didn’t tell her at all
*did not use the bound
inflectional morpheme for
the past tense
Engage = en-gay-sh
*Spanish does not employ
the voiced palatal affricate
in word final position
“We haven’t been there
since for two years”
*Translated Spanish word
‘desde’ to “since” and
retained the English rule
‘for’. Should have only used
“for”, not both
“I guess I’m gunna be
shorter, like short.”
*Uncertainty with use of
comparative inflectional
morphemes
Costume = cos-toon
*Spanish does not employ
voiced bilabial nasal in
word final posiiton
“We were waiting for the
prices to get go down”
*Translated Spanish phrase
‘hasta que se bajaran los
precios” = ‘until the prices
went down’. Instead she
translated resulting in “get
go down”
Actually = a-chu-lly
*Spanish does not employ
the voiceless velar stop in
word initial position
“When I was 12 you didn’t
let me go out with anyone
else “
*Translated Spanish phrase
‘nadie’ into “anyone else”.
The ‘else’ is unnecessary in
context
I did manage to have a little
boyfriend
* Translated ‘enamoradito’
(in context it means
‘unimportant boyfriend’)
into “little boyfriend”
“With the other three
brothers that I have”
*in context, unnecessary use

8. of word “other”