Assessment Task: Case Study of A Second Language Learner

The second language learner that I have chosen to assess in my case study is an international student from Korea who is now attending year 11 and does the ESL course at my school, the Hills Grammar School. I will refer to my student with the name ‘John’ for confidentiality reasons.

In this case study I will introduce my student, his language background; his exposure to English before coming to Australia and his current level of English based on the ESL scales after analysing his speaking, reading and writing work samples. I will assess John’s proficiency in speaking, listening, reading and responding and writing and I will make a detailed profile of the reading and responding aspect.

John was born in South Korea and lived there for 13 years. He attended the Wolchon Middle School in Korea till the age of thirteen. His mother tongue proficiency is very good as he likes reading and still reads books in Korean when he has time. John moved to Australia together with his mother four years ago, so he has not lost the contact to his first language. He uses both Korean and English in his everyday life, both at home and at school, he keeps in contact with his family in Korea, reads the news on the internet and listens to Korean music.

His first exposure to English happened while he was still in Korea. He studied the language for about 4 years in school and from a tutor. Learning a foreign language in Korea does not include conversation in that language. English is taught only for reading, writing and listening purposes. For this reason John had a good knowledge of the grammar, he understood written language, but was unable to communicate in his second language.

When John arrived in Sydney he was not enrolled in an intensive English cen...

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...ge of conjunctions to join sentences; e.g. also, however

The subject-verb agreement happens for most nouns e.g. the aspect is, the purpose is, first reason is, John makes only one error of this kind when he writes :a dictator is selfish and thinks other people is less human being. Another error John made is regarding the simple past tense of the verb to cut, which is an irregular verb and does not follow the pattern used for regular verbs, which is adding the ending -ed.

John maintains a good control of time and tense; in his texts he uses mainly present tense and future tense.

After assessing John’s language proficiency by observing, interacting and analysing his oral and written language we can conclude that he is a phase three student who generally functions fluently and competently in English, but who occasionally needs assistance to improve even more.