English Language Proficiency - Report Example

Running Head: Assessment of English Language Proficiency Assessment of English Language Proficiency Student’s Name: Institution: 1. Introduction To start, English language has been widely used for communication purposes since time in memorial. It is generally referred as a mother tongue to close to 400 million people and a second language to people equivalent to those of the native speakers. Around the world, a good number of foreigners learn English as a foreign language too; thus, the recognition of English language as a universal language. Despite English being one of the easiest languages in the world, a number issues are presented to illustrate why English is the universal language. This means that most books, airports et cetera around the globe are written in English for purposes of better communication. For educational purposes, English language is widely used, therefore, making the language necessary for all students regardless of where they are. As for my wife, an idea of becoming an English teacher triggered her intentions to learn the English language where she underwent thorough learning processes, with an aim to achieve her desired dream. In respect to this, she has since managed to progress with her learning of the English language and now on her way pursuing a bachelors in Education. Background For this report, I have chosen my wife Amsha to assess his language proficiency. Amsha is 28 years old and comes from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). She is a native Arabic speaker; however, a nonnative speaker for the English language. Amsha’s English learning experience is best described as a limited and unstable experience. Firstly, she did not learn the new plan of teaching English at his primary schools or the new developed version of the English books. Thus, she began learning English at the intermediate stage and pursued it till her secondary level. At these stages, she learned simple English, which represented learning the alphabet, numbers and the three main tenses (i.e. present, past, and future). At that time, writing and listening skills were the main two practiced skills. Therefore, her English experience was limited, disqualifying her from interacting with native English speakers. After that, a big jump happened in his English learning when he entered the King Fahad University for higher education. During that time, English was the language of teaching and learning at the university. According to his proclamation, this stage was the most difficult one in all his experiences. Hence, all studied subjects were introduced only in English. However, she was convinced that it was at this stage that consolidated her language firmly and gave her the real strong foundation in the English language. Nevertheless, she did not complete her work at that the university for its strict rules, and after two years, she moved to Al-Qassiam University (QU). At that, the university, a steep decline took place in her English learning journey. She spent five years specializing in "Management Information Systems" (MIS), the thing which had made him completely removed from an English atmosphere. Indeed, the Arabic language returned again to be the language of teaching and learning. Obviously, the concept of instability in his English language learning style is clearly visible below and will be more pronounced in the next phase. After her graduation, her English was very poor, so she travelled to Amidale, Australia to study a course in English at the University of New England. Like any international university, an English course is considered a prerequisite before enrolling in the higher studies. To this end, the staff at the English Language Centre (ELC) made a placement test for him for the sake of identifying the appropriate level that best suits his English proficiency. This test included various samples of the material to be covered in the curriculum. It was 'neither too easy nor too difficult, but appropriately challenging' (Brown, 2008, p. 454). The results revealed that he should start at Level two and continue until completing Level three. He has successfully completed all levels within five months and has started his studies at the master's degree. The methodology adopted depended mainly on constant observations for the sample after taking the ethical considerations before conducting the study. These observations were spread over a period of one month. Beside the observation, we received help from certain online English tests as long as the English language proficiency could be measured by an English proficiency test (Brown 2008). This online test is called the "English Proficiency Test" and has been already comprehended and provided by a trusted site called Transparent Language, which is used by more than 12,000 schools, universities, and institutes such as "The Foreign Service Institute" and "The Defense Language Institute" (Transparent language, 2010, online). The test 'consisted of standardized multiple-choice items on grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension' (Brown 2008, 453). This assessment was undertaken after receiving the ethical approval from Amsha. 2. Fluency In English language, according to Smith (1999), the term fluency refers to a variety of factors, which include reading, writing, speaking and clearly expressing ones’ self. This means that a speaker of English possess the ability to read, write, understand and respond in a clear and concise manner when communicating. This is achieved as learners continuously involve themselves in learning the language from a beginner to an advanced stage of readers and writers. 2.1 Listening Listening is a skill that Amsha has properly mastered. This could be ascribed to her academic history. The listening skill requires a great deal of concentration at school (“Listening skills,” 2006). For instance, she listened exhaustively to various conversations during the class by cassettes. Furthermore, she had earned a stronger foundation at intermediate and secondary school, which has instilled in her the ground for this skill. For example, she listened, for the first time in his life, to his lectures in English, which had been introduced by native speakers. She faced many obstacles in the first two weeks, especially whenever the lecturer was a native speaker. However, she had to focus, jot useful notes down, and discuss them in order to survive that phase. Later on, her ears became accustomed to listening to English appropriately even from native speakers. Away from the learning atmosphere, Amsha loves to listen to foreign music and watch English programs. From my observations, I have noticed that she loves listening to any English song and tries to decipher the complexity of the pronounced words by replaying the song more than one time. It is often that he resorts to the internet to look for its lyrics, when she is unable to analyze its words. In addition, she used to consume long hours watching movies and English television series such as "Friends" and always listened first and then read, if any, the subtitle (translation) to comprehend the meaning and usage of some words. After coming to Australia, she has managed to progress in listening, due to some learning in the ELC, attending tutorial sessions at the University of New England (UNE), and speaking with his Australian friends. In ELC, she had to participate with his international friends in discussing what they had already learned in each class. She was immersed in many listening activities such as role-playing, games-based listening, and writing what the tape says. She has received much praise from her teacher regarding her smart command of this skill. Indeed, this is reflected on her sterling performance. Amsha shows more improvement in listening when she starts attending the tutorials with her colleagues at the university. She has nine lectures a week, and all of them require careful listening to be understood. Outside the UNE, she always meets her Australian friends whom are mostly men. I have discovered that she always needs to focus more concentration on listening to men more than women because male speech tends to be pronounced more quickly using a lot of colloquialisms (The looking Glass Society, 2003, online). Sometimes, I would ask her after each conversation with his friends about what they were discussing to check the extent of his understanding. She always acknowledges that she cannot completely understand what is being said referring to some of them as speaking countryside English which is more difficult. However, she understands women better as they 'enunciate much more clearly and precisely than men' (The looking Glass Society, 2003, online). 2.2 Speaking Amsha’s speaking ability has undergone a series of up and down changes, which have affected her fluency. Firstly, her speaking skills (“Speaking skills,” 2004) were somewhat neglected at school. Then it was activated at the University for about two years. For the first time, she made a long presentation in English before the class and achieved credible success. However, she moved to AlQassiam University (QU) where her speaking skills were semi-deactivated during the five years, except during limited outdoor activities such as restaurants or hotels. Later on and precisely after coming to Armidale, she has switched on that skill to interact with others and study at the UNE. At that time, Amsha’s mastery of not only her speaking skills, but also other skills reached a peak. As a part of the curricula at ELC, she introduced two short presentations and four book reviews before the class and attained good marks. With the book reviews, she was asked to read a short story and in the following week narrate its summary to the class. Regarding the presentations, the first one was at Level two about "Technology in Korea", while the second one was at Level three about "The Challenges of Water use in Saudi Arabia". She made prior preparations for them by writing down what she was going to say and thereafter constructing PowerPoint presentation (PPSs). In his first presentation, she was trying to apply the slides by using complete sentences in order to help her while speaking. However, in the second presentation which was displayed at Level three, she seemed more confident, more progressed, and felt satisfied with only writing the headlines of the topic. This improvement seemed to happen while studying for his bachelor’s degree. The majority of his work is restricted to the computer and there is no space for speaking. This decline continued when she was home in SA for a holiday. However, it went up when she came back again to pursue her degree program at the UNE. From frequent observations, she is still progressing and many Australian teachers and friends praise her mastery of speaking, questioning how many years she has in Australia. she inserts many meaningful words, synonyms, and Australian indigenous words in her speech. For example, she often exchanges the word "think" with "reckon" and commonly involves "no worries" and "hello mate" in dealings with her friends. Moreover, the person’s character to whom she speaks affects the degree of her competence in speaking. For example, she always expressed herself comfortably with her friends though she finds it difficult to speak with her coordinator. 2.3 Reading The reading skill is a major aspect in the quest of achieving academic success (“Reading skills, 2004). In a word, extensive readings enable learners gather lots of new vocabulary which in turn make them good readers. Amsha’s reading experience in English is deemed quite limited and not well enough to enable her read academic articles or either difficult books. At KFUPM, she read an extreme amount of information on myth and physics not considering other fields. As a hobby, she was keen with reading newspapers especially "Arab News". At ELC, she was involved in various reading activities such as reading current news and telling her colleagues about what was happening. Later observations uncovered that her comprehension was seen to be improving whenever a picture or diagram was identified in the article. Nevertheless, she faced difficulty once the stream of the argument or the plot of in a story was discussed due to her lack of knowledge in vocabulary. Quite often she uses the dictionary during her reading; however, this interrupts her from comprehending the line of ideas again and consequently prevents her from savoring the language. On the other hand, she does experience success occasionally through extracting whatever is considered as important from a book while doing her assignments. She is a good guesser of words’ meanings through the use of context. However, her ability to guess correctly depends primarily on how difficult the topic is in general. For example, a short test has been undertaken to guess the meaning of "depression" in two different articles from two different fields: the medical and academic fields. By first reading the medical article entitled "What is a Depression Disorder?" (2010, online), she fails to predict the exact meaning where she only anticipates that the meaning might relate to something psychological. Later, she comprehends the straightforward meaning by reading the second article entitled "Depression in Student Life" (2007, online) taking a shorter time reading than the first article. By responding to the online proficiency test, Amsha’s general score was reflected at 73%; hence obtaining 109 points out of 150. She was categorized to the advanced beginner level. In the reading comprehension section, two questions out of ten had been answered incorrectly. The reasons seem to be that the amount of specific information in the first question and the new words in the third one; thus Amsha received 80% (24 points out of 30). The documents of the test including the correct answer sheet are all contained in the attachments. 2.4 Writing While still in Saudi Arabia, writing skill was frequently practiced at school especially at the secondary grade. Students were asked usually to write short paragraphs using new words in a certain lesson. However, this was not enough to prove that one was a professional writer. In KFUPM, Amsha was intensively exposed to the learning of the grammar aspects (i.e. tenses) , which was also carried on at the ELC. At this stage, her writing had become more polished than before. She was trained to explain a graph or chart by using the appropriate words such as 'decline', 'peak', and 'fluctuate'. In addition, she was taught how to write an outline and an organized essay considering its cohesion and unity by applying lots of conjunctions such as 'therefore', and 'but'. She has since applied that very well by writing an essay entitled "Do we need a global language" at Level three.” Moreover, she has also written two drafts for her presentations of Level two and three. By reading these drafts, we inferred that her writing became more organized and more coherent through practicing. This was more apparent at Level three than in level two. For example, in the second outline, she begins with an organized introduction highlighting what she is going to discuss further. Whilst in the first outline, she seemed untidy and presenting lack of comprehension concerning the topic. In the attachment, there are authentic copies of these drafts with her teacher comments. In addition, there is a copy of a written essay at Level two and one at Level three. Some of the spelling mistakes, singular/plural errors, and verb tense errors were committed at Level two while writing an outline, choosing suitable words, spelling correctly, composing the topic sentences, and including a conclusion were clear at Level 3. Despite all these, the writing duties were reduced after initiating her master’s studies where majority of her work depended mainly on software programming, I have since noticed certain points that still need to be improved. Firstly, the use of punctuation marks in sentences is to be improved, spelling, and capitalization too in his writing. To ensure this problem is solved, she has been asked to write a free short paragraph, which ultimately asserts a certain point of her understanding. Note that, she takes five minutes to write sixty words which is preferably good. Below is a sample piece of her writing: 'I hope the coming days will have positive signs, I am focusing for the next days because of many reason: Firstly, the career day In Melbourne, hopefully I can find a good Job. Secondly, the final exams are coming and no time left to Study. I find it somehow hard to visualize about the exam moment, but I will do it perfectly'. Secondly, in her word choice, she is unable to employ some words which she already knows. For example, she has asked me for a word better than 'make' in 'I have made this web site according to…. '. My reply was 'constructed' and she quickly got the word, though it had not rung in her mind. This issue probably goes back to the idea of knowing a word without using it frequently for speaking. This example illustrates the interrelationships among the skills (i.e. speaking-writing). 3. Accuracy In English language, according to the (EDLA 519 study Guide, 2010, p.72), the term accuracy is used to mean the ability to come up with sentences that are grammatically correct. Thus, accuracy covers the correct pronunciation and lexis used in the English language as discussed in Amsha’s case study of English language. 3.1 Pronunciation After joining me here in Armidale, Australia; Amsha is slowly catching up and occasionally produces the Australian accent (Cox, 2005) from frequent contact with others, listening to music, and watching movies. Thus, she has become more understandable when speaking with other students. The recent observations reveal that her intonation decreases whenever she is not sure about the correct pronunciation of a certain word. Recently, her tongue has been accustomed to pronouncing some words such as 'negotiation' by linking its sound to something similar in Arabic, for example, 'monagashah' , which has the same meaning and the pronunciation is almost similar. This comes with the learning principle of "meaningful learning" which links 'existing knowledge/experience and new material' (Brown, 2008, p. 66). 3.2 Grammar Before coming to Australia, Amsha’s foundation in English grammar was good; thus, this was unanimously accepted by the ELC. She knows how to properly use the tenses and the passive form of phrases as stated by Hinkel (2004), for example, she writes 'I have eaten my meal', 'I had eaten my meal', and 'The meal had been eaten'. Moreover, she shows positive results when conducting a short test on verb inflections (i.e. verb, noun, adjective, and adverb) and possessive pronouns. However, she still needs more training on certain points as she still has difficulty in comprehending grammar articles. For instance, she writes 'I read book' without 'a'. From the proficiency test, we conclude that she still shows weak usage of tenses, pronouns, and irregular verbs. She received 34 points out of 45 (79%) in part one and 36 points out of 45 (80%) in part two. 3.3 Lexis Amsha is considered to have familiarized herself to a limited range of vocabulary (Grohol, 2010). Most of the words relate to the 'computer’ language such as 'decode' and 'shift'. She did come across many words at her learning years at the university, but due to the inactivity phases which she had passed through; she actually forgot a number of them. For instance, the word "consumption" has been learned at KFUPM and a few days ago she just returned to the dictionary to check for its meaning. Furthermore, many of the words are still new and ambiguous to her. They include 'extinction' and 'reconsolidate'. On the other hand, Amsha becomes more proficient in choosing meaningful words while speaking or writing. Previously, I have quoted his use of many words in one sentence to convey his message, though by now she is able to convey her message in a few words. For example, she no longer says "a small supermarket" and now she uses simply the word "grocery". Moreover, she is very proficient in generating verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs from the root. For example, she writes 'complete', 'completion', 'completed', and 'completely'. In the proficiency test, she scored 15 points out of 30 (50%). By analyzing her mistakes, we realize that her problems were in encountering new words like 'aisles' and unknown word's spelling as in part III, question ten. She knew the sound of the correct answer which is 'rite' but did not know its spelling and thus, she chose 'write' for the answer. Conclusion The two skills which Amsha seems to have mastered very well are listening and speaking while the lowest one is the writing. She needs to read more in order to write better and vise versa. Moreover, she needs more practice in listening, speaking, pronunciation, and grammar to overcome her weaknesses and strengthen her comprehension ability. The diagnosis of the proficiency test for Amsha uncovers that her level of English is at the advanced beginner level with a general score of 73%. For a non-native speaker of English, this proves excellence as she has determination to acquire the skills. As she draws closer to her graduation, Amsha is quite confident that the skill achieved will enable her return to Saudi Arabia as a trained English teacher; thus enroll in one of the teaching institutions. I am very proud of her determination as she has proved that she is capable of beating odds to achieve her dreams. In light of this, she has struggled very much in learning English as a second language. Though the language is seemingly easy, it posses many challenges thus making it complex. Despite this, Amsha is till chasing on her dreams to attain her degree in education. 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