English Interview Essay

Introduction of the Student: I had met my student through a friend of a friend of a friend. Her name is Emilia and she is from Spain, coming to Sacramento State as an incoming freshman. She has learned English off and on through her 17 years of life but mainly speaks Spanish and Catalan when she is in school or at home. She was born in Manresa and spoke of her brother who is going to school in Germany and her beagle; which she showed me pictures of. Our first meeting was at the Sacramento State library. I had given her a tour of the school while getting to know her. She was very shy at first because she was worried that her English would be wrong and has a fear that when she talks she might be wrong. She told me that she doesn’t like to explain complex situations because she cannot find the words that she is looking for. When she starts school in the Fall she will enrolled in English 10M, as a class to help her with her English.

She knew the basics of English but her grammar and sentence structure was off. She knew what she wanted to say but sentences were short without rephrasing the question. I believe with more conversation shell be able to communicate using the right past, present and future tense. I also noticed that her “B” and “V” sounds were the exact same; along with “I” and “E”. I did some research and the sound i isn’t present in her dialect. When it came to spelling she would call the letter R as “er”; which in the sound “er” refers to E+R as in the word runner. I am excited to work with the phonetics and pronunciation of English letters and pairs of sounds. Luckily English and Spanish is so similar that the alphabets are going to be easy to teach. My main concern is helping her with conversations with the correct grammar and tenses of verbs. She is excited to learn but is reserved right now, I might be using an IPad to help her if she is open to