The document is a language learner profile of an 18-year-old English language student named Michelle Rodriguez. It includes an analysis of her language skills based on an interview transcript and writing sample. The analysis found Michelle has some difficulties with pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. However, she is generally fluent and understandable. A lesson plan is then proposed to help Michelle improve her use of prepositions by using imagery as a learning strategy. The plan involves a survey, presentation of the strategy, and practice applying it to learn directions.

1. UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE LA SANTÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN
FACULTAD DE EDUCACIÓN
PEDAGOGÍA EN EDUCACIÓN MEDIA EN INGLÉS
“LANGUAGE LEARNER PROFILE”
Course: English Methodology II
Teacher: Roxanna Correa
Students’ names: Camila Cuevas - Angel Sandoval Villarroel
Concepción, September 23th, 2013

2. 2
INDEX
i.
Language Learning Strategies Framework…………………………………………….3
ii.
Learner’s background…………………………….………………………………………5
iii.
Interview……………………………………………………………………………………6
iv.
Phonetic transcription……………………………..………………………………………8
v.
Analysis and examples:
a. Phonetics and phonology………………………………………...………………9
b. Lexis………………………………………..………………………………………9
c. Grammar………………………………………………………………………… 10
vi.
Lesson Plan……………………………………………………………………………….13
vii.
Lesson plan evaluation…………………………….……………………………….……15
viii.
Conclusions………………………………………………………………………….……16
ix.
References………………………………………….……………………………….……17
1. LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES FRAMEWORK
Throughout many years it has been very difficult to find out a successful or a
standard way to teach language. Many approaches and methods have been
created to discover what the key is to teach successfully and to make the
learning process more efficient for students. Chamot (2004) points out that it is
important to have some strategies to make the teaching process easier and

3. 3
more helpful for our students, because learning strategies involve techniques
for understanding, remembering, and using information and skills to model the
new content. These techniques can help students by showing them explicitly
how to learn a certain area of the target language, which will facilitate the
developing of their independence and confidence as learners. In addition,
students increase their motivation by becoming more successful in school and
much more aware of their own critical thinking and learning process.
Three additional learning strategies are considered to be essential when
acquiring a second or foreign language. These strategies are: Planning, which
refers to set goals and identifying steps to achieve that aim; monitoring, which is
related to checking your comprehension while completing a task and identifying
specific problems you might have; and evaluating, which is connected to
assessing yourself on how well you have completed the task.
Chamot and Robbins (2010) in their CALLA handbook, present five different
phases that involve the learning process. These phases are: Preparation,
presentation, practice, self-evaluation and expansion.
In the preparation phase, it is relevant to identify clear objectives as well as
the strategy the student is going to use to develop new vocabulary. This phase
consists of motivate all the students in the class. In presentation, the teacher
presents the new information in varied ways to make students clearly
understand the target content. When presenting, it is recommended to
emphasize the strategy that will be used and to connect students’ prior
knowledge. Then, in practice, the type of task is essentially important, it has to
be authentic and it has to provide collaborative work with classmates so they
can complement their knowledge with each other. After that, during the selfevaluation phase, students reflect on their own performance and evaluate how
well they did by assessing the strategy they used. During this step, students will
identify their main difficulties and obstacles that made them not to achieve the
goal previously proposed. Finally, expansion is concurrent with students’
personal decisions about the strategies that they find more effective for them,
so they can apply the same strategies to new areas or other subjects by
modelling them according to the new context.

4. 4
Eventually, having some strategies into account to achieve students’ goals
during a task or activity seems to be vital to make students’ learning process
successful. Therefore, as teachers, it is indispensable the use of strategies in
the classroom to master both students’ self-reliance and their own pace of
learning.
2. LEARNER’S BACKGROUND
Michelle Rodriguez is an 18-year-old girl, who is in her 4th grade in an
elementary school called “Colegio Amanecer” located in Coronel. Michelle
explains she has been exposed to English language since 5 th grade in primary

5. 5
school. She admitted that the learning process was very weak until she got in
elementary school, where the English level is higher. Throughout these four
years she has been asked to do many tasks such as dialogues, oral reports and
brief research, which have been very challenging for her.
When Michelle was 10 years old, she began to listen to English music,
influenced by her older siblings and demonstrating a special preference for HipHop. At that age, she continues learning when starts to look for some of the
lyrics in order to understand what the songs were about. In addition to this,
Michelle declares that she and her family tend to watch several movies during
the week, most of them with Spanish subtitles. She thinks that it is a good idea
to do this, because the idea to compare both languages makes it easier to
understand their different structures.
3. TAPED INTERVIEW
Interviewer (I)
Student (S)

6. 6
1) I: Hi Michelle, how are you?
S: Fine.
2) I: Yeah, uhm… how old are you?
S: Uhm, I am eighteen years old.
3) I: Eighteen?
S: Yes…
4) I: Umm… When’s your birthday?
S: Ehm, my birthday is… mmm… December thirty.
5) I: Alright... what kind of music do you like?
S: I like emm… Hip-Hop music.
6) I: Michelle, what’s your favourite singer or band?
S: My favourite singer is Eminem, eh because is a great… emmm he
is ammm… he… he is a good… so… uhm... I like.
7) I: Do you like the way he sings?
S: Yes.
8) I: Ah ok... uhm what’s your favourite song of that artist?
S: My favorite song is a “The love the way you lie”, eeh... because…
eeh… singer with Rihanna and she is a beautiful and like eeh… his
style.
9) I: Ah ok... Uhm Michelle… would you like to be a famous artist?
S: No, really no.
10)I: Why?
S: Ehh... because is a… ehh… have a normal… normal life... eh with my
parents and my sister.

7. 7
11)I: Ah ok... what’s your favourite sport?
S: My favourite spot… sport is a… basketball... and football.
12)I: Ah… Do you play basketball?
S: Yes.
13)I: And what’s your favourite basketball player?
S: Emmm my favourite team is a… Lakers.
14)I: Lakers? Ahh, ok. And your favourite basketball player? I don’t know,
uhm… Michael Jordan or… any other?
S: Mmm… emmm Cole Brian.
15)I: And where is he from? United States? Spain?
S: Mmm… United State.
I: Ah ok. Ok, that’s it. Thank you very much.
S: Thank you.
I: Bye.
S: Bye.
4. PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION
Question #8
I: Ah ok... uhm what’s your favourite song of that artist?

8. 8
S: My favorite song is a “The love the way you lie”, eeh... because…
eeh… singer with Rihanna and she is a beautiful and like eeh… his
style.
I: Ah ok... Uhm Michelle… would you like to be a famous artist?
S: No, really no.
I: Why?
S: Ehh... because is a… ehh… have a normal… normal life... eh with my
parents and sister.
I: /ɑː (ok) (uhm) wɒts jə ˈfeɪvərɪt sɒŋ əv ðæt ˈɑːtɪst/
S: /maɪ ˈfeɪvərɪ sɒn ɪz ə ðə lʌv ðə weɪ jʊ laɪ | (eeh) bɪˈkɔːz
(eeeh) ˈsɪnʤər wɪð (Rihanna) ænd ʃiː ɪz ə ˈbjuːrifəl
ænd
laɪk (eeehh) hɪz staɪl/
I: /ɑː (ok)/ /(Uhm) (Michelle) wʊd jʊ laɪk tə biː ə ˈfeɪməs ˈɑːtɪst/
S: /noʊ ˈriːəliː noʊ/
I: /waɪ/
S: /(Ehh) bɪˈkɔːz ɪz ə (ehh) hʌv ə ˈnɔːrməl | ˈnɔːrməl laɪf eɪ
wɪð maɪ ˈperənts ænd ˈs ɪstər/
5. ANALYSIS AND EXAMPLES

9. 9
a) Phonetics and Phonology
RP
Student
Birthday
/ˈbɜːθdeɪ/
/ˈbɪrddeɪ/
Thirtieth
/ˈθɜːtɪɪθ/
/ˈθɪrtɪː/
Great
/greɪt/
/greət/
Sport
/spɔːt/
/espɔːrt/
Michelle is quite fluent at the moment of answering questions, and it is very
easy to understand her due to her good intonation and word stress.
Nevertheless, she makes some minor mistakes when pronouncing some words
that represent a challenge even in the written form. The /θ/ phoneme seems to
be difficult for her since there is not such sound in Spanish which explains why
she could not articulate it properly.
b) Lexis
Michelle’s vocabulary storage presents some faults and lack of some function
words as seen in question 4; she did not use the preposition in before the
month and in question 6 Michelle forgot the noun ‘singer’ when trying to give a
complete characteristic to her favourite artist. Another problem is presented at
the moment of using words either as a verb or as a noun. In question 8, firstly
the student forgot to mention the personal pronoun ‘he’ to refer to the singer
(line 2), secondly, used to word singer instead ‘sings’ (line 2), and thirdly, she
made a mistake using the wrong possessive pronoun his instead ‘her’ when
referring to a woman’s style (line 2). Then, in question 10, the interviewee
seemed not to remember the form ‘I like to…’ and after a long hesitation she
finished the sentence with the reason why she did not want to be famous.
Finally, in question 13 it can be observed that the student misunderstood the
question by mentioning her favourite basketball team, but not her favourite
basketball player.

10. 10
c) Grammar
Generally speaking, Michelle presents several grammatical mistakes; however,
her answers are clearly understood and related to what she was asked. Now,
there are some sentences that need to be more complete in order to achieve a
good understanding.
During the interview, we focused mainly in the way she linked her ideas,
notwithstanding, the lack of vocabulary made her speech sounds quite slow
producing a lot of hesitation in her answers. In question 6, the student was not
able to express her whole idea, but at the end of the sentence she did not
mention the object pronoun ‘him’:
“He is a good… so… I like (him).”
In question 8, at the moment of giving the reason why she likes that song,
Michelle shows a problem with the use of determiners as well as in question 11
and the use of personal pronouns:
“(…) she is a beautiful and (I) like eeehh… his style.” (question 8)
“My favourite spot… sport is a… basketball…” (question 11)
Then, in question 9, two mistakes are noticeable. The first mistake is the wrong
expression of negation: “No, really no.” instead ‘No, not really’. The second
mistake is when she gave the reason of her answer by omitting the form ‘I like
to…’
In the following table Michelle’s mistakes are shown and contrasted with their
correct use:
What the student said
What the student wanted to say

11. 11
He is a good… so… I like. (Q6)
He is a good singer, so I like him.
… because… eeeh… singer with
Rihanna and she is a beautiful and
like eeehh… his style. (Q8)
… because he sings together with
Rihanna and she is beautiful and I like
her style.
No, really no. (Q9)
No, not really.
Because is a… ehh… have a
normal… normal life with my parents
and my sister. (Q10)
Because I like to have a normal life
with my parents and my sister.
My favourite spot… sport is a…
basketball and football. (Q11)
My favourite sport is basketball and
football.
WRITING TASK
Instruction: Write a short story including the following five words: Mother –
house – cat – city – run
“My mother went out house in the car. When she was in the car for city,
appeared a cat running and she killed it. When she arrived work she felt
guilty all day”.
WRITING TASK ANALYSIS
During this task, Michelle worked with a dictionary to find the meanings of the
words she did not know. Despite that, she made the two typical mistakes when

12. 12
students use a dictionary, one is the use of incorrect words in different contexts,
and the other is the word-by-word translation.
In the first sentence, Michelle does not make use of the prepositions that would
create a more specific description of her story; the lack of prepositions can be
seen in the sentence:
“My mother went out house in the car”.
This is explained she should have used: ‘My mother went out the house and
got into the car’.
Moving on to the second sentence, we can identify two main problems; firstly,
there is a wrong use of the preposition ‘for’ (“for city”) which is why we consider
Michelle should have used ‘across the city’ instead.
“When she was in the car for city, appeared a cat running and she killed it”.
Secondly, we can see a problem with syntax, “appeared a cat running…” (verb
+ subject), so our student has a difficulty when following English grammatical
structures with Spanish grammatical structures at the moment of translating.
Finally, in the last sentence, the only problem we identified is the wrong use of
the verb ‘arrive’ referring to ‘get’ to a certain place or activity, ‘work’ in this case.
6. LESSON PLAN
Learning Strategies Lesson Planning Form

13. 13
Content Area
: Grammar
Topic: Giving directions
Grade
: 4 grade highschool
Objectives
Content knowledge/Skills: At the end of the class the S will be able to learn
how to use the imagery strategy to learn prepositions through a speaking
activity.
Procedures
Preparation
In the first place, the student is asked to answer a learning strategies survey in
order to find out what her own personal strategy is and at the same time know
how she likes learning grammar.
“Today class we are going to learn how to give directions, but first, we are going
to concentrate on the different ways to learn grammar. I’m going to give you a
survey that you have to complete according to your preferences. Read each
sentence carefully, and if it matches with your characteristics mark with a tick
(✓) in the corresponding box. Once you have finished the survey, we will
discover which is your personal strategy and I will give you some advices on
how to work with them when you study at home”.
Presentation

14. 14
Present the strategy using imagery and tell the student why it is useful and why
it is appropriate for the lesson.
“Today we are going to learn how to use imagery. This strategy will help you
remember the prepositions that we will learn today because you will create a
mental image for both words and images. Imagery can be used for
remembering facts, for example when you study history, and when you need to
memorize the address of one of your friends. Let me give you an example of
how I use imagery. When I go to the supermarket, I always remember the
prices of the food I usually buy, because the price label is written in big and
bright colours. You know that every supermarket has its own particular colour,
and that makes it easy to remember. So, what I actually do is to read the
information (look at the images and texts) and afterwards, make a picture of that
information in my head. That’s how I remember prices”.
Practice
Give the student a worksheet with a list of verbs and prepositions she needs to
complete before doing the actual activity so she can have a guide when giving
directions. Discuss and correct her answers and tell her to use the strategy
discussed to try to both remember the correct use of the prepositions and also
reinforce her memory capacity. After that, give the student a map of the city she
lives in and ask her to choose one place to start from there (for example, the
square). Now ask her to help you get to different places in the city (bank,
church, school, etc.) because you need to do some paperwork so she has to
give you directions (turn to the left, at the corner, in front of, etc.). Tell her she
can use the worksheet to help herself.
Evaluation

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Once the student has finished, give her the corresponding feedback on her
performance and then ask her to evaluate herself. Right down the mistakes she
made while giving the directions and explain why she made them. Lead a
discussion in which the imagery strategy is analyzed and discuss how much it
helped her.
In order to finish this part, give her some time to memorize the use of the
prepositions using the imagery strategy. Give her another worksheet with a
different map and repeat the activity. Once it is finished, ask her if she would
use the imagery strategy again to help her memorize things.
Expansion
Ask the student to show you her geography or history textbook and ask her to
read and memorize the information using her memory and imagination.
7. LESSON PLAN EVALUATION
To start with, our lesson has several advantages. The development of our
strategy involves many cognitive areas that will be helpful for our student in her
learning process, due to it improves mental imagination through imagery of
words (prepositions in this case) and increase memorizing development in the
student’s brain. In addition, the strategy we selected is expandable, in other
words, it can be applied on other subjects or different contexts that our
interviewee could be complicated. On the contrary, our strategy presents an
important disadvantage, because memorizing using imagery requires a lot of
practice by part of the student, so the more exposure to this learning strategy
the more effective will be the acquisition of the target language.
8. CONCLUSIONS

16. 16
Throughout this assignment, we discovered that the main problem of our
interviewee is related to prepositions. For this reason, we decided to reinforce
her lack of prepositions when producing the target language through a lesson
using a strategy, which will help her to memorize many of them. Another
problem that we identified was the incorrect use of determiners such as ‘the’, ‘a’
or ‘an’ and the instance when to use them or not. We will try to cover them
together with prepositions as a whole in order to model her language production
in a better way.
During this process of interaction with an authentic student and after assessing
all the aspects of her language production, we could realize what the main
problems are when students learn a second language. This extensive review
has been very helpful for us, because it is related to what we will have to do in
the future with our own students in school, so we are more aware of the typical
mistakes students commit and we can deal with them by thinking of a solution
from now on.
9. REFERENCES

17. 17
Chamot, A. U. (1999). “Prediction with Story Telling” “The Learning Strategies
Handbook.
Addison Wesley Longman.
Chamot, A. U. (2004). Issues in language learning strategy research and
teaching. Electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 1(1), 14-26.
Chamot, A. U., & Robbins, J. (2005). The CALLA Model: Strategies for ELL
student success.