Analysis of Piet S.
Piet is an English Language Learner (ELL) for whom English is the third language that he speaks, Afrikaans being his first, then Setswana. To evaluate his level of proficiency in English, I interviewed him, asked him to provide a writing sample and a reading sample, and to discuss some photographs that he took that embody America in his eyes.
During the interview it became clear that Piet is not overly confident in his English skills. He intimates several times during the interview that he is quiet and that he listens to other people talk. From the age of ten until he was thirteen, Piet learned English as a foreign language during one class each day in a small Afrikaner school. His focus was on farming rather than education, but he must have done quite well to have been placed in an English private school in Durban. Going to an English-speaking school with so little English to survive with must have been challenging, but schools in South Africa must have the facilities to handle ELLs, due to the diversity of languages spoken in the country, and the fact that English is a minority – if elitist – language. Five years of immersion in an English-only school is considered the minimum for academic success (Peregoy & Boyle, 2008), and Piet exhibits a level of proficiency in his writing, reading, and oral language that should serve as a good base going into higher education, provided that he continues to develop his skills.
Interview
The interview with Piet showed a young man who is proud, opinionated and somewhat lacking in confidence in his language skills. Moving into a strange environment (from rural to metropolitan) with no friends and very little knowledge of the language must have been very difficult at thirteen years of age. Piet would have gone through a silent period as he learned the intricacies of the language; Piet even alludes to this early period in his language learning, “I maked friends with rugby and I listen to the talk. […] Soon I was talking also”. After five years it may be that he still does not have the confidence to truly express himself in English. Alternatively, it may just be his personality to be quiet. He does mention this a couple of times during the interview, once regarding girls (personality?), and once when discussing differences between English and Afrikaans (language?). To fully evaluate the interview I have used the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM):
· Comprehension: 4 – Piet understood almost everything that I asked him, though he did struggle with a couple of concepts. I did not have to slow down for him to comprehend.
· Fluency: 4 – He speaks fluently, and can be easily understood. Occasionally Piet had to stop and think about what he wanted to say, but did not falter over words or phrases.
· Vocabulary: 4 – Piet’s English vocabulary is interspersed with inappropriate words (kindt (sic.) for child, for example), but this may be dialectic rather than incorrect. South Africa being so diverse, it may be a normal part of speech to use many of the terms that he uses. However, it may also be that Piet uses Afrikaans words in place of English words that are similar; he did recognize that he pronounces “school” “skool”, and that he makes this error fairly regularly. He also resorted to simply pointing to body parts at one point – he may not have known, or was not confident in knowing, the correct terminology for throat and nasal passage.
· Pronunciation: 3 – His accent is strong, but that is not necessarily a deficiency. However, his accent is strong enough that the listener must concentrate hard on what he is saying.
· Grammar: 3/4 – Piet makes repeated mistakes grammatically. Much of the time his grammar is fairly simple, but correct. However, he frequently makes mistakes that should have been corrected previously: he says “maked” for the past-tense of make (made).
According to the SOLOM, Piet is a Phase II/III, limited English proficient speaker (Peregoy & Boyle, 2008).
Piet mentions the ESOL classes that he took at his private school briefly and in a negative light. To fully understand what ESOL education he experienced, I contacted his school, Kearsney College. Ms. Needham, the Headmaster’s secretary, was able to explain the process to me. At Kearsney College the ELLs are given ESOL instruction through ESL Pull-Out during regular class time. Instead of getting one-on-one instruction, all of the ELLs are pulled at the same time. Ms. Needham described the classes as being very interactive and dynamic, which contradicts Piet’s assertion that the teacher just made sure that they were quiet while they worked on exercises in a textbook. Even if Piet’s perspective of these classes is inaccurate, and Ms. Needham’s official description is correct, this method of ESOL instruction does not seem to be sufficient to help ELLs who have had very little English instruction and are being immersed fully in classes and an environment in which English is the only language spoken.
Reading Sample
The reading sample illustrated Piet’s lack of confidence in his vocabulary and pronunciation. He is comfortable with simple words, but stumbles on more complicated words. Piet does, however, have the skills to breakdown complicated words into syllables and then construct the words correctly using phonemic awareness. It is unclear whether he then understands these words once he can pronounce them, whether he can use context clues to decode the words, or if he simply does not understand these words. A Quantitative Reading Inventory (QRI) would be an effective way to assess his reading comprehension.
Writing Sample
Piet’s writing sample demonstrates a lack of handwriting skills that I was surprised by. South Africans, in my experience, tend to have excellent handwriting due to a lack of computer-based instruction, and a focus on traditional teaching methods that involves a strong basis on writing skills. Piet’s writing reflects his spoken language skills in grammatical and semantic issues. His sentences are simple and lack verb-tense agreement and many words are mis-constructed. In one sentence he describes one of the pictures that he took for the Photographic Elicitation: “the picture has a fat on a bike” – Piet refers to an obese person simply as “a fat”. I was unable to find out whether this reflects Afrikaans semantically, and is simply coding confusion, or if it was just lack of language skills.
Photographic Elicitation
Piet’s photographs and his commentary on them was interesting. He repeatedly refers to Americans as being both fast and never working, and being lazy. He means by this that Americans live fast-paced lives, but do not engage in much physical work. This must be juxtaposed against his life in South Africa where he worked on his father’s farm. The first picture is of a sports car; Piet sees this as the epitome of American extravagance because it is fast, expensive and, in his opinion, useless – “what does it do?”
The second photograph is of the “fat on a bike”. Piet does not have much to say about this picture, except that he has not seen so many large people. He obviously finds this amusing as an indictment of American culture.
The third picture he actually gets quite passionate about. In this he discusses the openness of American culture. The picture has a girl in front of a house flying the British flag. Piet sees this as an example of how accepting America is, and compares this to South Africa where there is still so much separation between races. He again slips into using Afrikaans in naming his own country, and his grammar and syntax breaks down as he gets excited.
Suggestions
Piet is making smart decisions to reach his goal of becoming proficient in English. His ESOL education has not been optimal, but he has a very solid base of English language skills. He lacks confidence in his abilities, but is actually quite skilled in his oral language. His written skills are lacking, but judging by his handwriting, this may not be only in English. His reading skills are on par with his oral communications skills; he is limited in his proficiency and confidence and may benefit from a QRI to find what areas he needs the most help in.
To build his communication skills, Piet would do well to attend an English-speaking university upon returning to South Africa. He has discovered that he learns well by listening, and obviously understands a lot of what he hears. Having Kevin as a language mentor is helping also, though I did suggest that they communicate more in English (but not exclusively).
References
Peregoy, S. F., & Boyle, O. F. (2008). Reading, writing, and learning in ESL. Boston, MA: Pearson.
