Assignment:
3,000-word essay
Essay title: Discuss common problems learning English ________ (choose one aspect of SLA, e.g. vocabulary or pronunciation, etc.) among ________(choose the nationality) learners of English, and outline teaching implications.
For this assignment you will write an essay based on a small-scale project.
• You will chose one aspect of language acquisition (e.g. vocabulary, collocations, idioms, language functions, phonology, or morphosyntax) and review the literature to identify the aspects of English that may prove problematic for L2 learners from one linguistic background of your choice.
• You will interview one learner of English from a linguistic background of your choice (e.g. Spanish learner of English or Chinese learner of English, etc.). This may, for example, be a student from MSc in TESOL. You will record a 5-minute interview with this English language learner and transcribe it. You will then look for areas of difficulty in relation to your selected aspect of language acquisition. You will compare your findings with the findings arising from the literature that you have reviewed.
• Based on your literature review and your own findings, you will design one EFL classroom activity and explain how it would help address the issues that you have identified.
Essays should be 3,000 words long. This includes in-text quotations but excludes the essay question, bibliography, and appendices. It is the School policy that essays over or under 10% should receive a 2-mark penalty reduction.
• Footnotes are not allowed.
• Please include a bibliography at the end of your essay.
• Please paste in the essay question / description at the beginning of you essay.
• Please attach a cover page to this assignment. You can find a cover page under the Assessment tab on MyAberdeen.
• The transcript of your interview and the EFL classroom task are to be placed in the appendix.